


Between the Cracks

by prettyfacebreaker



Series: Between the Cracks [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Beating, Bisexuality, Blood and Injury, Branding, Canon Gay Character, Canon Non-Binary Character, Captivity, Claustrophobia, Crime Fiction, Drama, Drowning, Drug Abuse, Drug Addiction, Electrocution, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, F/F, F/M, Gang Violence, Gay, Gun Violence, Gunshot Wounds, Interrogation, Kidnapping, M/M, Organized Crime, Past Torture, Psychological Torture, Rescue, Self-Hatred, Self-Sacrifice, Torture, Waterboarding, Whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24685570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyfacebreaker/pseuds/prettyfacebreaker
Summary: In present-day Chicago, the drug trade is out of control as two powerful Latin-American cartels destroy lives and run turfs across the United States: the Los Santos and Cortes syndicates. Following the lives of a once honest lawyer, Hayko, a sadistic mobster, Nick, and DEA agents desperately trying to dampen the violent drug trade, morals tend to fall between the cracks. Usually, the morally righteous fall harder.
Series: Between the Cracks [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1784785
Comments: 24
Kudos: 14





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This series focusses on a branch of law enforcement and organized crime. Reader's discretion is advised.

_Four years before..._

If there had ever been a time to be less nervous, this was it, but Hayko Grigoryan was failing miserably in the few short minutes he had been sitting in the police station. Briefcase tucked between his legs, he stared, idly at the silver star badge decorating the wall in front of him, a tacky courtroom-reminiscent wood on which the star hung, dark and rich. Noble. 

He was scared. 

Going to law school had been its own world of anxiety but volunteering to parole a real criminal brought a new terror, a shivering one that wound around his chest and squeezed him so tightly he forgot how to breathe for a second. Or more than a second. Five seconds now.

 _Screw that. This isn’t new. It’s exciting to be this nervous._

Hayko listened to the gentle buzz of talk, the dribble of hurried footsteps and they whirred in the back of his mind long after they were gone and replaced by new ones. It was an evergoing whisper, something that laid on the gloomy atmosphere thick. And before he could do any more observing, the only thing in his view was a towering blonde woman. Hayko’s eyes snapped up and he automatically fixed his posture. The first thing about her was that firmly slicked back hairdo, coated in product, and even firmer black eyes. Then came her stern, Cuban lilt that snapped him out of whatever trance he was in. 

“Afternoon, sir. You here for the parole program?” 

“That’s me,” he confirmed, swallowing. “It’s—uh—I’m Hayko. It’s not every day you get the shining opportunity, right?” She smirked like she had but couldn’t care less if it killed her. 

“Just call me ASAC Iglesias and I’ll show you to your man.” Ms. Iglesias was a woman of few words and the ones she did say seemed all but unwilling. 

He trailed after her through the station, tugging at his suit uncomfortably as the halls grew narrower with every wind and twist, or seemed to be at least. Of course, the convict couldn’t be _too_ rough around the edges, right? Hopefully, no raving psychopaths or America’s Most Wanted? This was meant for his future—not as someone who put people away, but who defended them. _You can parole one before defending them. You’ll get a taste of the other side._ A suggestion by parents and friends alike.

So here he was, on the other side and getting that taste. He just hoped he wouldn't regret it.

Hayko broke the tense silence, “So, you’re with the...Drug Enforcement Administration?” His sleeves rustled as he pulled up the watch. How long was this damn station? 

“Yep. Am and have been for nine years.” Iglesias stated the fact so cooly that—given her age—it gave him a hint of insecurity in his own experience. Nine years in the DEA? _Jesus Christ._

But he only pleasantly responded with a sound of praise as the briefcase drew closer, scrawny fingers gripping it as if for support. His longish brown curls bounced along with him as he compared the officer’s macho flair to his own mellow cadence. It wasn’t easy being this vulnerable in the big city. 

There he sat in all his glory—or _lounged_ —feet kicked up and wrists cuffed to the table. From just the first glance, Hayko could immediately tell who was waiting behind the orange jumpsuit. The convict looked up after a few seconds, lips pressed together and hostile, narrow eyes. Suddenly, the room seemed much smaller and his suit, a bit too tight near the collar.

“This, Hayko, is who you’ll be babysitting for the next month or two,” ASAC Iglesias sounded miffed, holding the door open with her weight. His entrance looked suspiciously like an invitation to an animal cage, just from the way his ‘man’ looked at him. 

“Mr. Sinclair was jailed on possession charges but nothing too serious so this shouldn’t be too scary. Of course—” she shot “Mr. Sinclair” a less than generous look, “—the prison authority will be watching _with_ you.” 

Hayko licked his lips, fidgeting slightly with the hem of the shirt. “Alright. Um—it’s nice to meet you.” _Nice to meet him? Real smooth._ He’s some _dopehead_ , not your family friend. 

“—Wish I could say the same,” the prisoner spoke abruptly and with a British inflection that snapped at him. “Also, I heard her say your name. Unless you didn’t?” The quiet tapping of fingers filled the room, replacing Hayko’s stunned silence. That voice of his wasn’t quite hostile and not quite annoyed either, to him it seemed more like boredom. 

He opened his mouth to stammer something out but couldn’t find the words, or courage. But ASAC Iglesias found them for him instantly.

“Don’t give him lip, junkie” the cop said, trying to get her order across with a tough look but he clearly wasn’t paying attention to her. No, “Mr. Sinclair’s” thin green eyes were zeroed in on Hayko specifically and he watched him cautiously in return like the handcuffs wouldn’t be enough in case he wanted to—

Shifting nervously, Hayko pushed a stray curl out of his eyes but tried to match the intensity of his stare. It was a menacing one too, eyes burrowing into his own. Mr. Sinclair nodded slowly; he found something. Then he _smiled._

Once the door creaked shut, there were only the two of them in the ever-tightening room. Hayko sat across, serving him the papers of his probation order. He sucked in a breath and kept it, acknowledging the tension.

“Mr. Sinclair,” he began firmly but didn’t get very far before that abrupt voice cut him off.

“—You plan on calling me that for the next month?” He smiled again but it didn’t reach his eyes, being more of a face contortion than a smile. “‘Cause it’s annoying as shit.” 

Eyebrows pricking up, the student gave a blank look, a little startled. “Would you like to be called by...your first name?” Hayko rustled through the papers quickly, hiding any edge. “Nicolas?” It sounded respectable enough. 

“It’s Nick,” he insisted with a scowl. Not so respectable. 

As he was about to apologize, Nick cut him off again with a soft snort. “Hayko.” He seemed to be testing the name on his tongue. “Rolls off the tongue nicely. _Haayyy-ko._ ” Nick mused, letting his name bounce off each time with a harsh, glottal ‘k’ and he hummed, looking like he was about to ask the name’s origin.

Hayko gaped but laughed softly, breathing in relief at the dwindling hostility. “So, Nick,” he tried again, “do you...understand the conditions of this order?”

Sitting still, he said nothing for a second. “Which are?” 

“—Um, that you—” he stammered faintly, and even though he had run through the page twenty times before coming to the station, Hayko, once again, found his eyes darting across the court order, to Nick’s utter _satisfaction_ , “—have to appear before Court when they ask and to notify them of any change of address.” 

Nick yawned and kneaded his shoulder with his jaw. Wherever his head was, it was far from here. Or perhaps, he was fantasizing about what horrible things he’d like to do to him if the situation was a little different. “That's it? So, can I still snort coke?” Glass shattered.

“Wha— _No!_ ‘You shall not commit the same offense or any other offense that is punishable by imprisonment,’” Hayko read fluently, but his tone was incredulous.

At first glance, Nick’s face didn’t betray a history of drug abuse but with a careful look, it was clear from the hazy eyes sunk in dark pools that he was using. 

Though he couldn’t have been much older than Hayko himself, his tilted down face and eyes peeking beneath the eyebrows made him look sinisterly older—not to mention the impish grin. Nick’s hair was short, murky black, and pulled out of his eyes with some slick hair product—maybe the same as Iglesias. _Some sleazy college frat boy probably._

Nick smiled again and Hayko got more uncomfortable each time he did. When he saw each of his simpers, he saw dry amusement like how one would watch T.V. or read the news. Slowly, he uncrossed his legs off the table one at a time. Within a few seconds, Hayko heard his first laugh come out in a kind of raspy, high-pitched giggle. “How old _are_ you?” Nothing short of an insult.

But Hayko betrayed no offense, trying to stay grounded. “I’m—turning twenty-two soon but I’m not sure how that’s…” He snarled under his breath. _So much for that._ “Do you understand the conditions?” 

“Yeah, yeah, I understand the stupid conditions. Hey, Hayko,” Nick interrupted himself, “Has anyone told you that you’re _really_ fucking cute?” Nick cooed, voice coated with ridicule, and his grin grew watching the student’s lip twitch in thinly veiled disgust. “It’s like you talk, and it goes in one ear, out the other because I just can’t stop starin’ at you.” 

Unwittingly, Hayko’s hand darted to the nape of his neck as he struggled, wide-eyed to respond to this jaunty creep who was clearly delighted at getting a rise out of him. Cute? _Cute._ Is this who he has to keep an eye on for the next two months? It wasn’t exactly what he had signed up for. Drunken offenders, petty thieves, juvenile delinquents, and all the rest—sure— but this _sleazeball_ wasn’t mentally shelved away.

Gritting his teeth, he swallowed hard and returned with a stern “That’s hardly appropriate—” before Nick cut him off again with his second laugh, slamming the table hard enough to make him flinch back and his head fell back in a string of giggles. 

“Blimey, you are _not_ fit for this job,” he snorted. “I’d say come back when the piss-drunk highschoolers with D.U.I’s have roughed you up a good bit.” And he cracked a slight close-lipped smile. That smile of his had such a cloy smugness that it made Hayko grit the backs of his teeth for around the tenth time. 

“I don’t think you’re in any position to criticize me. I’m not the one in _handcuffs_ ,” Hayko now sneered—nearly spat—back and watched Nick’s smile flutter from enigmatic to threatening in an instant. Before he had been a stuffy obstacle but now, he was a problem. Or prey. He truly felt like if those handcuffs weren’t there... 

Rolling his shoulders back, he feigned confidence as the prisoner stared at him, and the longer he stared, the darker his glower became. Neither of them moved for a while. After what seemed like ten minutes of unyielding silence, Nick spoke over Hayko’s shallow breaths, low like it was a secret. “Do you wanna know something?” Steepling his fingers, he gave him something of a bored stare, cornering him as if he was a trapped animal. “It’s a big, scary world out there, Hayko. And this _posturing_ isn’t gonna cut it.” 

Hayko froze, suddenly never feeling so seen-through, so unsettled from a person’s way of speaking before. Unsettled from what he saw in his face, which was nothing. He saw nothing but the vast stretch of dark forest, nothing but a hole in which the fall was deep. _Empty_. 

Nick continued smoothly, “And one of the things I want you—what,” he flippantly gestured to Hayko’s suit, the handcuffs rattling, “with your straight-laced jacket and tie—to know is that unless you get a reality check,” his fingers drummed the table, “and learn that self-righteousness isn’t getting you _shit_ , you’re not going to survive.” 

With a twisted mouth, Hayko glared at him in fear, in silent fury, in _revulsion_. What startled him most was his air of confidence as he unwound his every insecurity, handcuffed to a table. It was like he knew him better than anyone else. And that was what scared him most. 

He had known the big, scary world from before any of the prisoner’s generous insights. One where he had seen his friends splayed on the streets protesting a country plagued with election fraud, where the Human Rights Watch was the only media attention they got, and where not a moment’s peace had been allowed into the kleptocracy that made him who he was. That was the _big, scary world_. And It hadn’t broken him; it had made him better. He was better than this— _this fucking piece of_ —Hayko forced out a breath, stopping himself before his mind slipped to darker places. He let his shoulders fall and filled his lungs again. Those two breaths were the only things stopping him from lunging at the smirking convict and snapping his neck.

“...Two weeks from now is your court appearance.” As the chair scraped back, the student stood up, betraying no anger. Not a hint of anger. “I’ll hear from you then.”

As Hayko left the police station, he was struck with shaking nausea, unlike anything he had felt before. Even now as he walked away, he could feel Nick behind him, following, the handcuffs no longer rattling because they weren’t there. Betraying himself for a second, his eyes darted back to check and as he turned back, he was almost half-expecting him to appear. The gentle Chicago breeze whistled and played with the crunchy leaf litter and with the Begonias lost to the summer’s end, though still pretty. Hopefulness lingered in his mind that once these two months were finished, he would _never_ have to hear from the convict again.


	2. Pinned Down by Wreckage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Los Santos and Cortes cartels have a violent clash over territory, where Santiago has to both witness death and contemplate his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for death thoughts, guns, violence, and blood

“Se acabó, _idiotas!_ ” Gunshots thundered in the background from unknown people and in unknown directions. “You’re out of bullets so give yourselves up!” 

Santiago gritted his teeth, tightening his grip on the machine gun as he hid behind the building, mere feet from the Mexicans. Glass sprayed randomly in tiny eruptions, the bullets destroying everything in their path from cars, to building windows, to people. Someone screamed and within seconds, hit the floor, disavowed. Dead. Forgotten.

“No saldrás con vida!” said a gunman, his rasp drowned by the roar of the chaos, the flutter of a bird’s wing in a storm. _You won’t get out alive._ Before Santiago could react to the threat, the squeal of tires caught his attention, more firepower having arrived at the scene. Heavy boots—many of them—pummelled the ground from the vehicle and aims were taken as quickly as the men had fired away. 

_A shout. A cry. A weapon reloaded. Another shout. Another cry._

Every blast to the once gentle air shook something in him, but he remained focussed; he had seen much worse. Like thick, winter hail, rapid shots came one after the other, clawing on top of each other to tear through the cartel, and through the otherwise calm city. It was like the night would never end. 

Now, Santiago’s breath caught as he stood face to face with a Cortes henchman, his finger poised threateningly on his weapon. The man wasted no time in making him his target. This was it. It was over. Each movement Santiago made went in slow motion: his arms raising the weapon in the defence against the automatic one aimed at his skull, his stumble trying to take aim, and the cry that ripped from him as Nicolas dropped him to the floor before the bullets could. Fluidly, Nicolas’s free arm swung to the henchman and his handgun drilled him dead in an instant, a hand still pinning a wide-eyed Santiago down. If his mind hadn’t blanked at the exact moment he heard the Desert Eagle explode in four rapid shots, he would have helped but his saviour didn’t seem to want or care for his help or gratitude. The freshly dead man’s hand twitched just once before he faded away. Like the rest of them.

“Get up,” he ordered breathlessly, yanking him up by the arm. “Go over there.” Another cry ripped through the turf and neither man could tell whose side it was from. Nick took off in some direction once he had pulled the man out of shock and handed him his weapon, just after a look. Santiago nearly shrank at it. It was one that meant ‘ _get it together_ ’. 

More shots, more demands of surrender, and more swift deaths plagued the night but no sooner had Santiago taken a breath than an orange cloud violently erupted from the gang housing, shooting into the stars. Everything froze in time for a second. It was a terrifyingly _brilliant_ distraction. 

Like a thunderclap, the blast-wave swept over the closest few, billowing outwards, filling the plaza, and letting the sound of windows shattering and bodies pattering on the concrete to fill the air. Santiago himself had barely escaped the explosion but fell back, the adrenaline pumping into him with each heartbeat. The gush of flame glimmered in his eyes, his mouth agape in terror as black and orange painted the sky and gave the gang war a brief reprieve—even if it was only for a moment. The only thing that could distract him from the massacre right now was the beauty of the small ignition.

Suddenly, he was pulled out of his trance by a female scream. It rang in his ears until—

 _Camila_. 

Nick hadn’t gone far enough to miss this, and their eyes snapped immediately to the direction it came from. In the midst of the turf war, they had nearly forgotten that there could be other collateral damage besides their own lives or their men’s. Wasting no time, both of them bolted across the lot, ducking behind cars while the others recovered or reloaded. 

Santi’s mind raced. _Who the fuck set that off? Us?_ He knew it didn’t matter because the politics of _who_ was worthless. 

With the wreckage holding her there, Camila lay face down with her coral hair splayed around her head, looking vibrantly carrot-coloured from the explosion’s light, and matted with blood and dirt. Just visibly, her finger twitched and she could just barely crane her neck up to the shadows approaching. “Please…” she gasped. “H-help...its too heavy-”

“-Hey, hey, it’s us, it’s us, don’t worry,” Santiago reassured as he dropped to his knees before her. The damage wasn’t nearly enough to kill but the “heavy” was a large metal pipe, fiercely crushing her down into the concrete until it looked like her ribs had folded in on themselves. Camila’s eyes found Santi’s, large, scared. Desperate. _If you could ever forgive me, Camila._ Expelling the grisly thought, he turned to Nick who was already preparing to lift the pipe. 

“Get over here and fucking help!” and Santiago stumbled across from him in response, stammering some unintelligible apology as his fingers slipped across the metal slick with blood. A jagged portion of the destroyed pipe had ripped into her back but the spine was untouched—and thank _God_ for that, otherwise, he wouldn’t have gotten the paralyzing image out anytime soon. Terror curdled in the pit of his stomach as they heaved the pipe, earning Camila’s ragged yell, but to no avail. It wouldn’t budge. _If you could ever forgive me._

She let out a weak scream of frustration at the failure, “Get, get it off! I can’t f-fucking breathe! G-get it...please...” Her voice broke in a half-sob, half-shout.

“We’re trying, dammit. _You_.” He snapped at Santiago. “Put your legs into it.” 

They lugged the pipe again and Santiago’s teeth clenched so hard with the violently bulging nerves on his neck that he looked next to feral. He could feel the gunshots starting up again. He knew they would see him defenseless, they would see Camila, and then they would— 

“Argh!” her fingers clawed at the concrete and she gasped in relief as the wreckage was lifted off. “F-fuck...”

“Don’t talk,” Nick ordered. 

Darting, her eyes met him in a wild glare but the effects of the pain collapsed over her. She dropped her forehead, groaning, her back torn, face scorched. Wherever her gun was, hopefully, the explosion had done away with it. Wasting no time, Nick lowered next to her and carefully put his arms around her waist to turn her around where the embers of the eruption were dying in the sky. Santiago watched as he hauled her into his arms and stood up, nearly out of breath and looking like he was going to collapse. “Get the car,” he breathed. “We’ve done enough. We’re going” 

“But Corte—”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about them,” he snapped back. “We pushed them enough. They won’t be selling here—not anymore. And if that’s not good enough, tell Eladio to talk to me.” His expression was one of dark satisfaction. “We sent the message.” A pained moan slipped from Camila as he jostled her against him, walking away quickly from the resuming chaos and slipping behind a building. An escape they hopefully wouldn’t see. 

Santiago gripped his hair with his clammy palms. The distant gunfire echoed through his mind. Someone was breathing quickly but he couldn’t place who. The eruption of a car and the shouts, so familiar but so foreign, and the rain of bullets was just background noise at this point. It was nothing but static as he stared into space, unmoving but with a single thought going through his head.

_This is how you’re going to die._

As he covered his eyes with splayed fingers, he felt the rumble of a vehicle from behind. The foul exhaust of diesel clouded his nostrils. 

Nick snapped, “Wake up. Get in.”

...

Camila lay, strapped and bleeding, in the back with her head on Santiago’s lap as the Pontiac sped through the city night. The absence of bullets was so relieving that he felt his eyelids getting heavier with each bump in the road. Her lips were cracked and gray against the medium brown skin and her eyes fluttered in and out of consciousness, glazed over with pain. His wrist moved to hers and took her hand as he cautiously looked over the damage done. Their eyes found each other, but he wasn’t sure she knew it was him. _Forgive me._

“Now that should be a lesson to those dipshits. All piss and wind,” Nick muttered hostilely to himself from the driver’s seat, ignoring her pained keens with each pothole he hit. 

Santiago’s look could have killed him if he’d seen it. He asked with his voice steady, “You think they might try to get us back?” 

As his eyes flickered into the rearview mirror, Nick stared at him wordlessly. The look made him nervous, as if his insecurity somehow betrayed more than he had intended. But nothing further needed to be said. If they did, that was their problem. Santi felt himself sinking into the seat until he heard the croak of Camila’s voice vibrate against him. It was low and came out in a laugh. 

“What’re y-you, worried?” Like if he was, his fear was a joke.

His eyes snapped down in surprise, and could only muster up a faint mouth twitch in return, mostly from relief that she could even talk like this. The weight of the action had tired him out too much for irony. _I’ve been here longer than you._ “Just, you look pretty bad. It’s not something we can go to a doctor for.” 

“No _shit_ ,” she coughed out weakly.

“Hey, don’t be rude,” Nick said from the front. “It’s not polite to tell girls they look ‘pretty bad’. Don't they teach you that anymore? Also, Kaki,” He smiled broadly at the nickname and it gleamed in the mirror, to Camila’s annoyance.

“Ugh, what—”

“Next time I agree to bring you with us, try to stay mostly alive. We could’ve been laid down, dragging that thing off of you.” 

Next time, of course. 

“Anyway, don’t you worry your little head off. Just a few more minutes and we’ll get you patched up real good.”

Santiago quirked an eyebrow and looked up. “What do...we’re not going to a _hospital_.”

“Who said anything about a hospital? I’ve got a guy we’ll visit. And don’t worry, he won’t mind at all.” Nick spoke with a saccharine tone and something told Santiago that the person they were going to would, in fact, mind. He just hoped he was more pleasant than Nick. 

As the Pontiac sped away, Santiago was finally struck with what just happened only minutes ago. They set off a bomb. They _bombed_ something. They blew something up and it didn’t matter how small of an explosion it was because they still did it, and he knew damn well that it was one of their own that set it off. He couldn’t prove it but he knew. He always knew and he also knew that there had been more of them shot dead than their own. Santiago had difficulty swallowing as a grim thought passed through his mind. _If anything, we did them a favour._ The people who died that night had been the luckiest, in his opinion. Whatever they thought of all of this, at least they got an easy escape. 

He could think of nothing better.


	3. Cornered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dead of night, Vladimir gets some visitors who need a favour. A maniac, a stranger, and a slowly dying girl.

The engineer roughly rubbed the sand from his eyes as he pulled himself out of bed and searched for his glasses blindly, succeeding within a few pats on his nightstand. As his vision cleared, he glared at the clock above the headboard reading two-in-the-morning. Two-in-the- _fucking_ -morning. And yet, for the hundredth miserable time, he’s tearing himself away from a warm and comfortable bed. He fought the urge to take off through the window and go running into a jungle where he’d plant his head in the dirt, never having to deal with another late-night disturbance again. 

It was frantic knocking that had woken him up and it hadn’t stopped since, getting more agitated with each second he didn’t answer. He stumbled out of the room ungracefully and ran through the living room, cursing in pain as he hit the leg of the sofa in near-total darkness, and he found the doorknob with mechanical ease. Shuffling, he paused. “...Who is this?” Laboured breathing buzzed inches away from him, quieted by the wooden door. 

“Only your favourite person, Vovchik,” came the muffled response from behind. Nick, that lousy bastard. Somehow, he had expected nobody else to be there with the fact that most people he knew cared about common decency enough to at least call before showing up. Although, not him and never him. “Gonna let in your new guests?” _Guests._

Vladimir kneaded his eye socket with the palm of his hand and cleared his throat, wiping the last remaining grogginess from it. “Can I ask why you are outside my house at two in the morning, _Kolya?_ Or is that the confidential information too?” He blew out a breath at the ensuing silence. “Well?” 

“Open the door and find out, _Russki_.” Nick’s voice finally came again, sinisterly unappreciative of the nickname. He had always thought it hugely unfair that the man could call him whatever he wanted but he could never return the favour. Although to his defence, he probably didn’t have experience with endearing names and to _nobody’s_ surprise. 

Pointing his eyes to the ceiling, he pulled in a breath of stale air and mumbled a foreign prayer, in hopes that whatever God hid in that ceiling would be kind enough to answer his prayers and pull him through the roof. “Nicolas, do I-I want to open this door?” A delighted chuckle that made him shudder was heard in response. He wasn’t sure what to expect but suspected that if Nick was there to kill him, he wouldn’t have bothered waking him up. Or would he have? It was hard to tell with that fucking maniac.

“Whatever you’re imagining I’m here for, you better make that decision quickly because there’s only so much blood a person can lose. Unless, of course, you’re _into_ that.”

And at that, he swung open the door, standing awe-struck and stammering at the sight under his porch light. A woman. She lay nearly unresponsive in his arms, her skin hardly visible through the amount of grime and blood coating her. Nick’s forearms were slick with blood from where the suspected injury was. Beside him stood another unfamiliar man and yet he somehow looked _worse_ than the aforementioned woman. Nick, like usual, looked like himself, if not just a little annoyed, and that was unnerving in its own way. 

His eyes darted from person to person and back to him, wide in horror. “Wh-what the hell is this?” On instinct, he backed away but even if he were to take off in a sprint past Nick, he doubted that he would make it very far. Bullets, after all, ran faster than legs. “Nyet. _Nyet _, n-no, no, I am _not_ doing this.” The longer the door lingered open, the more cool autumn breeze circled into the room.__

____

“Oh _yes_ , you are, Vovchik,” Nick lilted. “Are you really going to turn poor Camila away in our hour of need?” His voice was honeyed, dripping with danger and seeping into the comfort of his home, the place he could once trust as a safe haven. But even that place had betrayed him. 

____

Vladimir shook his head rapidly, stammering, “ _Radi Boga_ , I am not a doctor, please. I can, I can fix your airplanes just, just—" 

____

“Just nothing, Vovchik. Had we another doctor, we wouldn’t be here but according to dear Santiago here, we’re not going to a hospital. So, we need you to step in for those quacks.” He gestured to 'dear' Santiago with his head. “Don’t worry, I believe in you because you’ll take extra good care of her, won’t you now?” It was less of a question and more of a statement or a threat, and he rightfully suspected the latter. 

____

Vladimir shook his head in panic. Between the slowly dying girl and that revoltingly pleasant grin of his, it was better not to take the chance of being snide. It was a damn shame that Nova was at the vet too. “Fine, yes, fine, fine bring her quickly inside. Hurry, inside.” He stepped away from the door to let Nick pass where he didn’t even pause to take a look at the welcome mat or _acknowledge_ its purpose. Anger bubbled up in his chest, but some of it left when Santiago took the time to wipe his feet before giving him an apologetic look and waving. It wasn’t significant, but it said something, if not about Nick, then about him. 

____

“Um, hey.” Vladimir followed behind his guests— _intruders_ —in the dark, pushing the door shut, flicking the light-switch on and rushing to get a medkit from a drawer. The one he pulled at was sticky, difficult-to-open and hadn’t been touched in a while and he hoped that after tonight, he would never have to touch it again. “...What happened?” he asked in something close to a whisper, checking through the supplies. It felt miserable asking as if he could stomach the explanation, but he thought he deserved as much. For swimming in shit all the time, he hardly earned any respect from it. 

____

“That’s none of your business.” Santiago projected firmly, looking far away from where the rest of them were. “All you need to do is clean her up and make sure she lives, got it?” A strangely distant look clouded his eyes, making Vladimir think whatever had happened was better-left unexplained for the time being. 

____

Rushing, he brought and laid out the medical supplies with ill-disguised nervousness, feeling his stomach drop at the smell of potent alcohol once he cracked open the bottle’s seal. He felt Nick’s eyes on him the entire time he looked over the wounds and surveyed Camila’s responsiveness and that made him shiver more than the coolness that had spread throughout the room. _Okay okay okay okay just look over the damage you can do this_. “I-I need to, I need to clean her back. Can you take off the shirt?” He glanced desperately from one guest to the other, hoping one of them would volunteer to help. _Just breathe just focus and do the job and then you’ll be okay._

____

“Sure,” from Nick, who was leaning into the edge of the couch, came the response. His thankfulness turned to dismay when he followed that up with “Santi, be useful and help him out.” 

____

Without contest, Santiago went for the shredded remains of the shirt and tore them away, revealing the work needed to be done, burn marks, bruises from a fall, and the man-of-the-hour injury that tore across her back. Swallowing bile, an engineer, now-turned-medic got to work without a word, wetting a cloth with water but he paused immediately. 

____

“What’s the matter?” Santiago was drawn away from wherever he had disappeared to and stared at him insistently. 

____

Vladimir shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Too much dirt. I cannot work with this.” 

____

“So then clean out the dirt, Vovchik. I don’t understand why that’s a problem,” Nick sneered and crossed his legs looking infuriatingly bored. It was a wonder how long he’d lived to the ripe old age of twenty-seven with a mouth like that. 

____

He scoffed in disbelief and threw down the cloth. _Why am I more worried about this girl than this imbecile?_ “I need her in the bathroom. We need to wash the gravel and everything out of the wound so I can clean it out. So can you _bring_ her to the bathroom?” 

____

“Easy, easy,” he laughed and held his arms up in mock defence. Standing up to stretch, Nick then heaved Camila over his shoulder, ignoring the engineer’s ensuing protest for him to be careful. Taking her to the bathroom, he kneeled her in the tub, back facing the metal faucet that contorted the wound in its reflection. The place was a little dilapidated with enamel chipped off in the sink and a stream of water leaking from the base of the tub faucet when it was turned off. When Nick lowered Camila into the tub, the thud of her body against the side of it echoed through the bathroom, the walls a busy mosaic of brown and white that were starting to yellow. 

____

Vladimir ran in a few seconds later, the black-cloth medical kit in his grip that he set down beside the tub and his free hand shot for the spout, starting a steady flow of water. His intruders watched as he yanked the shower-head out of place and ran the stream over the grime and blood, within seconds coating the white acrylic with a watery red. As naturally as if he had been a doctor and with as little protest as if it wasn’t against his will, he did his job. Both for Camila’s life and unknowingly his own. 

____

“Nnngh, wha…” Camila moaned suddenly and her eyes fluttered, pushing against the stranger’s hand holding her down. “Wha...where...where…?” She was out of her mind, the rush of water, the voices swirling around her, and the blinding pain in her — _everything_ that she tried to ignore. Her head bobbed from side to side in what looked like objection but it wasn’t like she could do anything about it. 

____

Vladimir’s eyes snapped to her in surprise. “Oh, I, I—” This was by far the most invasive he had ever felt in all thirty years of life. The poor girl was barely sentient, _let alone clothed_ , and now she had to suffer through an amateur’s doctoring without as much as an anesthetic. Causing this suffering served him right for assuming his medical training was just another box to check. _I need to get medical things after this I will have to do this again and again anyways_. 

____

“Where am I?...” 

____

Sucking in a breath, he momentarily shot the water away. “You are Camila, yes?” His voice came softly, working hard not to startle her more than the situation already had. 

____

“Y-yeah — _a-argh_ — where’s…” she glanced around catatonically until her eyes met Santiago’s, the tension seeping out of her when he came into view. “I’m s-so cold...Wha’ happened?... I’m cold...” She struggled to enunciate anything, those gray lips hardly moving as questions drawled out one after another. 

____

Shakily, Santiago pursed his lips and blew out a sigh from his nose. “You got hit by the blast and it was, um, pretty bad.” Although he watched her more intently than any of them, he couldn’t quite meet her eyes which were too dazed and unfocussed anyway to catch his uncertainty. 

____

Now it was Vladimir’s turn for the confusion. “The blast?...” _An explosion, of course, why else would she look this bad? Who set it off, did they set it off?_ Ran through his head at lightspeed and shot to his tongue but never dared to leave it. 

____

“Don’t worry about it, Russki, just do your job,” Nick quickly cut in, gesturing to the blood and water in the tub. “Just a small blast, it’s nothing to cry about. A piece of rubble hit her.” The man crossed both arms over his chest too slowly to be defensive but just quick enough that Vladimir knew what the weight of the situation was. And if Nick was getting agitated, then it really couldn’t have been good. 

____

On a normal day, he would have shot back, not being one to take orders, but he was cornered. Like prey in a thicket with a maniac on one side and a dying girl on the other. Cornered and cornered and cornered and with each second, the mosaic of the walls were getting tighter. With each cry from Camila, the air got staler and every time he took a breath it was like sandpaper. Every small chunk of congealed blood that he had to scrape down the drain made his lower lip tremble. Regardless, Vladimir did his job for the life of a girl who looked too young to be involved in this shit. For a life that he had made peace with but one that maybe she could escape if she survived. 

____

“Alright, clean.” At last, the water shut off with a squeak of the tub lever and he gathered her in a towel, lifting her into his arms. Now the room was so tight, he wasn’t sure he could make it back into the living room but the girl lolling into consciousness again helped him breathe. “Now, we get her to the couch again and I can bandage the injury.” 

____

Santiago shut the door behind them as they left into the hall. “Can’t you do stitching too?” The response was a headshake. “Wait, why not?” 

____

“Why? Because I am not a fucking surgeon. _Dastatachna_.” he snapped as he tried to ground himself again. The stuffiness of the bathroom air was quickly replaced with the chill and open bliss of his living room and he could breathe again at last. “Just, give me a second please.” Vladimir lowered his forehead against his two thumbs for a moment, breathing deeply with his eyes shut as if they were his last breaths and the air was slowly running out. _Breathe breathe breathe you can breathe you can breathe the walls are away the walls are away_. 

____

Nick quirked an eyebrow at this. “Breathe, Russki. You’re alright.” He gave two rough pats on his shoulder which jerked him from the ‘second’ he requested. “Just finish the job and I’ll be forever grateful.” 

____

>It wasn’t nearly enough of a reprieve, but he didn’t have time for it anyway. Vladimir nodded, his eyes still sealed shut until he had the courage to open them again and sprint to work. Bandages stretched from the roll in whirs and adhesive tape tore off with a hiss before they were put together, wrapping around Camila’s waist and back until there was no evidence of how bad it had been in the first place. 

____

Camila blinked a couple of times and groaned, her voice dry and scraping against her throat. “C-Can you get water?” Her eyes searched the faces until she found Vladimir’s, a stranger but more friendly than anyone she had seen before. “Wha’s your name?...” 

____

“My, my name is—just call me Volodya. And yes, I will get water.” He carefully taped the bandages against each other before standing up and crossing to the kitchen in only a few long strides. The rush of water was heard for a few seconds before he returned with a full glass, bending and tilting it to her lips. 

____

Camila drank gratefully until the glass pulled away and she laughed with a rasp. “That’s a h-hard name to say. Where you from?” Placing her arms on either side of her body, she tried to lift up only to wince and fall back the short distance. “Russia, right?” 

____

With Nick’s attention somewhere else and Santiago taking a call in the corner of the room, Vladimir let himself smile for once that night. “Yes, from Russia.” He sat down on the armchair adjacent to her couch and hunched over his knees. “Is it that obvious?” 

____

She giggled weakly, her cracked lips pulling up in a grin. “Kinda.” Her head turned from side to side again, consciously this time as she observed his home. “You’ve got a nice place.” 

____

“...Thank you.” He nodded and had to smile just a little more intensely. Although he had seen mostly her pain tonight, her happiness was strangely infectious. It must have been the youth and maybe he was getting too old to smile properly nowadays. “It is nice enough—” 

____

“Hey, Volodya?” Her voice was soft even in cutting him off. Vladimir thought that her attempt to pronounce properly was endearing. Her Spanish accent sounded nice with Russian. 

____

“Yes?...” 

____

She smiled with her eyes. Secretly, like nobody else deserved to hear it. “ _Thank you_.” In a way, nobody else did. 

____


	4. Chasing Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hardened DEA Agent, Blanca Iglesias, and her partner, Vivian Gibbs, arrive at the scene of a massacre where Blanca reflects on her life choices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the aftermath of violence and descriptions of various injuries.

History was in the making again. Normally, DEA left this sort of tragedy to the FBI and Crime Scene Investigation to take care of but in hearing exactly who it was they were cleaning up, the vests had been there quicker than _ever_. Some of the newer agents didn’t take well to the scene, cringing away in disbelief with palms flying to mouths and Blanca Iglesias swore that she heard someone doubled over heaving at one point. She couldn’t blame them—not even a little bit—but after a while, things just got old. Strong reactions had a time and a place, but this fit neither of those.

“What’s the matter, Davies? You’re acting like you’ve never seen a guy with half his face missing before!” an agent cackled from far away. That was nothing new either: the criminally hysterical joking common to the more experienced bunch since, after all, how else did one deal with this job? Not with brooding sobriety, that was all Blanca knew. 

“Looks like they set off some kind of explosive,” said another, surveying the destroyed plaza. “Look, the windows and doors and shit. Who pissed off those Santos psychos _this_ time?” 

“It’s not like they were having a bad day, it’s an ongoing gang war with those Cortes guys, shitbrains.” 

Blanca crossed her arms, scanning the scene as clinically as if it was a photo in the forensics unit with her lips pressed in a firm line. 

“Looks like our little gangs had a big fight,” she said and circled a nearby corpse. His throat was slashed, face beaten, but it looked like he had evaded the explosion, for the most part, the lucky bastard. As a shadow approached from behind, Blanca made a percussive noise with her tongue in what sounded like disappointment but was really irritation. “All the action ever goes on at midnight or four in the morning.” A snort came from behind and Blanca instantly relaxed in hearing it.

Vivian walked up to the body and paused to scan it as she had. “It’s a damn shame too.” She pulled back one of her dark braids, tucking it behind the ear. “Hey, Iggy.” Her partner’s hand patted her superior’s shoulder encouragingly. “Don’t let this fuck you up, alright? We’ve got some leads now. There’s like, what, fifteen guys here, we can for sure–”

“You don’t have to do this every time,” Blanca scoffed. “We’ve been at this for a while. If you think this is going to ‘break’ me, I would have broken already. Plus, I can’t really afford to break.” As she glanced at Vivian, a cynical laugh betrayed her. Vivian almost gaped when she heard her laugh but wisely said nothing more, the painful _emptiness_ of it somehow being worse than if she hadn’t laughed. 

Exhaling deeply, she swallowed and looked around with a blank expression, as if the air around them was as dead as ever. “I’m just worried, you know? I mean...this week has been pretty brutal even for our standards and I just want to make sure you don’t start hearing voices and shit.” A smile tugged playfully at Vivian’s face but faltered just as quickly at Blanca’s silent nod, unreceptive and stoic as usual. 

“Yeah. Thanks.” 

“Oh, come on. You know I’m kidding.” 

Vivian snorted quietly, tugging at her yellow polyester shirt. “Not much of a talker, are you?” They exchanged a knowing look and Blanca _almost_ gave her a smile. If not for the scene in front of them, she would have given her the satisfaction, after all, she liked her; she liked her as much as she was capable of it. Vivian was familiar, a reliable friend, a safety net in case she went too far or sank deeper than necessary and she was all of that excluding the pitying _bullshit_ the others were prone to. Honestly, if one more person asked her if she _needed someone to talk to_ she would scream and rip her hair out. In that order. Not Vivian though, she never had to ask; she was smart enough to keep the sentimentality of the comfort at arm’s reach for the most part.

“It’s days like this that I wonder what the fuck my life has come to,” Vivian said and looked to Blanca with a grimace, patting her vest again. “If you hadn’t given all those pep-talks in the academy, I would be in Berlin, kicking off my art career right now.” 

“And yet, here you are,” Blanca grumbled, unenthused. The possibility had crossed her mind and she had always wondered how Vivian would run the aesthetic world, having an eye for that sort of thing. Or better yet, how they would run it together. The two had noticed another approaching from across the lot but only Vivian looked up, well aware that Blanca had noticed. Sighing, she too looked up at last as the concrete ran out and the crunch of gravel replaced the even footsteps. “Johnson?” A groan came from her partner.

Gabriel was red in the face before he had even finished crossing the lot but wasted no time. The snarl was evident and shot Blanca to her guard. “Do you have any idea how many people I _tripped_ over getting to you?” His voice came snappier than usual, but Blanca doubted he would give his superior a hard time. Would he? It was hard to tell with that miserable dick. It hadn’t exactly deterred him before but even a miserable dick like him had to have a semblance of timing. “Just, just look around you for a second and look at this shit. What is this?! These couple weeks have been dry, so either those bitching Colombians are great at staying off our radar, or they decided that the drug game is too much work and fucking quit. Turns out, I haven’t seen so many _bodies_ since,” he sputtered, “I _haven’t_ seen so many bodies.” 

“Just relax, Johnson,” she returned, voice firm, “Just take a breath and get a drink and leave the task force to my lead. I know this is overwhelming but—”

He scoffed in disbelief and pressed a fist to his forehead. “Overwhelming? Is that right? There are over a dozen people dead, dammit, and we’ve spent the last few weeks getting dicked around by idiots selling _dope_ on the sidewalk!” 

Blanca closed her eyes and rubbed her nose. “Johnson, we’re working on it. Just because we’ve had a few bad weeks doesn’t mean-”

“Oh, bullshit!” he snarled, “This city is turning into ‘80s Miami and the rate at which we’re going, it might as well be. Do you know how many overdoses the city police have dealt with since last year? I bet, I bet you wouldn’t believe the number if I _told_ you, Blanca.”

“I know the number, and I would watch myself if I were you. Just, just take a breather. I know this is a lot.” 

The man pursed his lips, biting his tongue before he could dig his grave any deeper. “We’re turning into Colombia’s lab rat, for fuck’s sake. These sicarios that keep popping out of nowhere, these ‘plazas’ that they run operations at—they’ve been terrorizing this damn city for years already. And we haven’t made a god damn _dent_.” 

Vivian looked like she wanted to say something but her interjection was cut off by Blanca. “I’m curious Johnson, do you expect us to take down the entire drug trade in a few months?” Folding her arms over her vest, she remained calmer than ever and this seemed to infuriate the agent more than anything. 

“I expect you to stop dicking the whole task force around and take more risks. We need to round these guys up and give them the Nixon treatment before they decide to wage another goddamn war. We, we, we can't afford this! Are you getting all this yet?” 

Vivian glared him down but was kept back by Blanca’s refusal to submit to anger—it wasn’t like that would change his mind anyways with a tongue-lashing. The man's anger was a rational response to an irrational fucking mess and she didn't even know what response was called for. 

“Alright, thank you for your insight, Johnson. It was _very_ helpful," Vivian snarled. "In fact, I’m sure we’ll have the narcos in the palms of our hands in no time.” 

“Yeah, my pleasure,” he said darkly with a final contemptuous look and turned off to another part of the crime scene, muttering to himself. 

“That man, I swear...” Blanca hissed under her breath.

The rest of them were too preoccupied to take notice of the drama and it could have been that which was keeping Blanca detached. Or maybe, it hadn’t fully registered that what she was looking at was partly her responsibility. He was partially right; it was her pursuit, her choice to oversee the hunt of the dreaded cartel. And the possibility that she could have prevented this tore her heart to shreds. Silently.

The two cartels had been tearing at each other since she could remember, and these days it was getting more difficult to remember what she was supposed to: the role of a dedicated employee, that of a trusted mentor, a competent officer. These were all expectations she kept on her shoulders diligently, never letting her performance be subpar because then, all of it would be for nothing. Hours of sleep lost to vivid night terrors eating away at her until there was nothing left in the morning but years of training turned automatic that dragged her to her damned uniform, to the kitchen, out the door, to the car, and to her job—no, her _whole life_ , all she had ever known. Where a team to command waited expectantly for her hand, the monsters she chased loomed behind her with taunting leers, waiting. Just waiting.

Blanca hadn’t noticed his swift footsteps fading away until the crunch of gravel brought her back. Or was it Vivian’s voice? It wasn’t easy to admit that anything from her mouth brought Blanca back quicker than anything else. 

Her partner sighed, morose. “Just ignore him. Who the fuck does he think he is, talking to you like that? You could have his ass booted if you said the words,” she spat, staring after him.

“...I’m alright.” Blanca made her way slowly to the photographers, rubbing her wrists in thought as cameras shuttered around her, white specks lingering for a second after the flashes came and went. She took a slow breath, letting the foul smell of the iron that coated the air fill her lungs, staining them. “You ever wonder what would have happened if...you went another way? Did something else with your life?” 

Vivian approached slowly, arms tucked against her vest. “Sometimes.” Lazily, her head fell back, eyes up at the sky watching a plane soar past the clouds. “But then I think, hell, why not this?” Blanca side-eyed her in disbelief. “I mean, if we weren’t here we’d just be reading this horrible shit like any other regular person. We wouldn’t be immune to it.” 

Blanca licked her lips thoughtfully, thinking it over. “Then again, we wouldn’t be _in_ it.” 

“Fair point. But, at least now we can make a difference.” 

“Not according to Johnson, apparently.” 

A laugh, "Oh, _fuck_ him. Just keep your head in the game and keep going. I know that you know that we do good work. It’s just a, a setback.”

Blanca raised an eyebrow and glanced at her. “Fifteen people dead is a... _setback_?” 

Vivian groaned, “That’s not what I—do me a favour and don’t jerk me around, alright?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“This whole ‘self-critical’ thing—it’s not a good look on you.” 

She scoffed, “So you’re suggesting I go full Johnson then?”

“If that’s what it’ll take for you to get your damn confidence back, why not? He seems to be flying high with how pigheaded the fucker is.” 

“Yeah well, why don’t you worry about yourself, Viv?” 

“I’m just saying.” 

“Maybe you should think before you do,” she responded with the air of a disappointed teacher. 

And Vivian chuckled in response, “Couldn’t be me.” 

The photographers moved cautiously, giving each and every picture the reverence and professionalism it deserved like it was an art. Maybe it was just Blanca being sentimental, but she felt the atmosphere grow heavier around each body she approached. _We wouldn’t be immune to it_. The wind, soft though it was, stung her eyes and she felt a tickle on her tawny-beige skin. _But I wouldn’t be this_. As she stepped forward, the crunch of broken glass drew her attention down where a woman lay, being photographed. Her face was singed, nearly unrecognizable and it was jarring to think that only one of them could see the other, hear the other. _It would be better_. Suddenly, she heard a distressed voice come from behind her. “Oh my god...fucking hell.” _I would be better_. 

She could feel the revulsion in the way his voice shook. As she turned her attention to the source, there stood an agent—newer—with his hand clasp over his mouth as if about to be sick, surveying a corpse with a look of desperation. It was a look she recognized all too easily: the initial horror of coming to a scene like this. It was a sickly nostalgic one and she couldn’t recount how many times that had almost been her. 

Walking over to him slowly, Blanca cleared her throat, uncharacteristically soft. “You alright?” 

“...Jesus,” he gasped, swallowing the bile in his throat. “The–the–” He was gesturing to the jagged, exposed bone on the lifeless face at which he stared, eyes peeled wide as if he couldn’t look away. Another one caught in the explosion, it looked like, and it was a pretty bad case too. 

Blanca swallowed and nodded sympathetically. “I know. I know it’s...bad.” Other than coming a bit closer, she kept her hands to herself, watching the agent try to put himself together like the rest of them. He was a young, strawberry-blond in what was probably his early twenties, about her height and a sun-kissed face, splattered with freckles—a good looking guy but if this became a common occurrence, that doe-eyed look of his wouldn’t last long. 

“I haven’t—I mean I don’t think I have—ever seen something like this…” He took a shuddering breath, giving a light shake of the head as he stared across the lot. “Fucking hell.”  
She turned to stare too, all but vacantly as she drew a bit closer. “It gets easier.” _It doesn’t_. 

“...You sure?...” His jaw was trembling, fists balled.

“You go in a few times and eventually...” _Don't lie_. “...it gets easier. You don’t lose hope, it just gets easier.” _Why are you lying?_. He nodded hesitantly but it was a show of strength and nothing more. It would be a miracle if he believed her—not after this. “Trust me.” 

Blanca watched his face, changing from nervous to composed in a few seconds, but it was easy to see it weighing down on him as if anything more and he would break. Now, it was a guessing game as to whether he would. Either he would break, or he would realize that this wasn’t even the worst of it. No, it was merely the top layer in the ever-expanding brine of filth, and Blanca was all too familiar with the remaining layers, having sunk through most of it already.


	5. Kidnapping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hayko pays the price of badly timed interference.

As Hayko paused in the street for a break from walking, he looked up at the deep red rim of the sun behind one of the buildings. For a blissful moment, he forgot the rush of traffic around him leaving diesel exhaust that collided with the fetor of food trucks. And he forgot the rattle and roar of the elevated train above him. People walked, they ran, they spoke, they shouted and these sounds always dizzied him on his daily route home, no matter how many times he had taken it already. But he would never get used to it because it wasn't _really_ home. He crossed the street with the crowd, pushing his tie out of his face when the wind brought it fluttering up and when the cloth came down, a jolly vendor was there to greet him. 

“You sir!” The old man smiled with his eyes, the liver spots that dusted his face moving up with the smile as he approached, “What would you spare for a flower?” The voice was confident but modest enough that Hayko couldn’t say anything but yes, and as he reached for his wallet the vendor teased a pretty yellow Begonia under his nose. The fragrance was pleasantly spicy. Thanking the vendor, Hayko tucked it into the pocket of his grey blazer. 

Evening changed to night quickly, Hayko approaching his apartment complex with a newfound appreciation for the way Chicago’s autumn foliage looked under streetlights against the black sky. He flicked up his wrist to check the time. Only _8:30 pm_ and yet it didn’t bother him that he was the only living soul in the area right now. 

There was rarely anything to be afraid of, even the occasionally distant rowdiness too far away to be noticed. Sometimes, the silence could be unnerving. Cars rarely circled through this area and there weren’t many kids either, but the peace was nothing short of pleasant. 

Until came an actual cry ringing down the street from a short distance away. 

Hayko didn’t want to freeze up or pay it any mind because he was so close to his building that he could practically smell its powdery bricks. He glanced in its general direction for a second before flickering back to his complex, giving it all the acknowledgement it needed. But now it seemed further away than ever before. With his heart in his throat, he kept going, unconsciously tightening his fingers around the briefcase. 

Until the cry came again, cracking like a whip. _No_. Because this time it was definitely a _scream_.

Now Hayko froze, any shred of safety he had once felt replaced by something darker. _Fear_. Fear, because that was the scream of a man who had just had his hand crushed against the ground by someone’s foot. Or been lethally stabbed. Or been...

Standing still, his muscles locked as he silently waited for the night’s stillness to be disturbed again, almost certain that it would be. And he was right. No sooner had he breathed out slowly and resumed his walk than the crack of bone pierced the air, clear as day and Hayko scrambled back, wide-eyed and his breathing hitched when an appalling wail ripped through the victim. _Just keep going, just keep going._ He tried to take another step but he couldn’t do it. _Just keep going just keep going._ The man was being badly beaten only a block away, he could hear the dull thuds of boots colliding with someone’s ribs, his stomach, his head. _I can’t just keep going._

If there was anything that scared Hayko more than witnessing a murder, it was purposely not doing anything out of fear. It was fear of cowardice. A fear of being a bystander. So when he heard the victim’s haggard scream for help, he couldn't stop himself from breaking into a sprint down the street. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid fucking idiot._

As he ran, the world around Hayko blurred, the bulbs from the street lamps became rows of dim light, and he could hardly feel himself breathing, as if he was holding his breath until he reached his goal. He didn’t have the foggiest plan for when he finally did reach the victim, just that he had to make it to him. His suit jacket quickly came loose, and Hayko’s face stung from the uneven wind rushing against him. Closer and closer and closer, the pained groans of the beaten man became louder until they were right behind the brick wall of an alley. 

“Confiesa, rata,” came a growl from behind it. “Sabemos lo que hiciste.” 

“¡P-Por favor! No fue mi culpa, lo juro!” 

“¿No sabes? Don Miguel no tolera a los _soplones_ ,” said another, ignoring his pleading. Hayko flinched as his foot drove into the man’s rib cage and the wail that tore from him was sickening. 

Hayko couldn’t breathe after he heard the word ‘soplone’. _Snitch._

This wasn’t a mugging. It was an ongoing murder.

Hayko was dazed for a moment, missing another kick to the man’s chest before the breathless scream shook him back to the scene. _Need to get out now need to get out now but he needs help, I can’t just watch oh God._ He had read about increased gang activity in the city for a few weeks now but never suspected that he would see it himself, in his quiet neighbourhood where not even birds chirped in the morning. 

_Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid._

The shadow’s laugh had a disturbing quality to it, maybe from the sobs in the background. “Bocaza,” someone spat. Too horrified to notice, Hayko stood quietly as inconsolable pleas tore through the man, begging for his life. His pleading seemed to have no influence on the man, however, whose hand retreated to the back of his belt and pulled out the inevitable, the crude yellow of the street light illuminating the gun’s barrel. 

“N-no, no no no no por f-favor! _Por favor, Matias!_ ” the victim wailed.

“No digas mi nombre, rata,” came his responding snarl. 

Hayko couldn’t look away as his nightmare played out before his eyes in real-time with a hand clasp over his mouth. He had run and run and run only to watch him die and there was nothing to do now but look on in horror. 

Suddenly, the bloodshot eyes of the dying man flickered to the edge of the wall and Hayko gaped, seeing them widen. He had become prey. _Please don’t._ In him, Hayko saw so many changing emotions that he couldn’t keep track of them all: fear, shock, hopefulness and then inexorable _desperation_. 

The most dangerous man was a desperate one. 

_Just go in peace, please please don’t_ –But it was too late for both of them. 

With a hoarse scream of help that shook Hayko to his core, the gangsters turned around quickly and their faces collectively darkened as they stared at him. It was then that he knew that he was dead. The man named _Matias_ wasted no time in pulling the trigger and let his former associate’s body slump to the floor after the bang echoed through the block. His blood trickled down the wall, indistinguishable from the rustic red of the bricks, and into the pool forming around his head.

Before they even had a chance to chase him, Hayko had already broken into a sprint down the same road he had once come running up with the stupid fucking hope of doing good. What good was that now? 

“¡Cosiguele!” The order came quickly and they were on his heel in an instant. 

Hayko couldn’t hear anything but the roar of blood in his ears as his heels sank into the ground with each stride. They were on his heel, he could feel it. They were getting closer. Closer, closer, closer. Just keep running. On the pavement, the street lights mocked him with chasing shadows seeming larger than they were, Shadows that, if touched him, would suck him away from this realm for good-

The crack of a pistol against his head sent him crashing down, a man’s kick to the ribs flipped him over and he cried out as shadows had him surrounded. Another kick to his stomach lurched him forward, arms flying out in self-defence. One to the head sent a flash of white stars exploding in his vision, everything going silent for a second before he heard a ringing fading in and felt blood on his temples. 

“Who the hell are you? You a _cop?_ ” One man asked breathlessly as he stopped the barrage of kicks. He hooked his boot around Hayko’s bloodied jaw and turned him over to meet his eyes. “That little shit I killed back there. You’re the one he talked to?” 

Hayko gasped in pain, arms winding around his bruised chest as he coughed. “P-please...”

“Answer the fucking question, gringo. You’re dying either way.”

“I-I’m n-not...I’m n-not,”

“No? Then what the hell were you doing back there, huh? Trying to be a fucking hero? Did you really think you were going to save that little rata?” he laughed cruelly. “What, were you planning on hitting us with your _suitcase?_ ” 

“D-don’ _please_ …” he choked out, “I don’ wan...wanna die…” The treacherous tears he had tried to blink away ran down his face and into his hair, drawing down streaks of blood with them. 

“If you didn’t wanna die, you shouldn’t have stuck your nose where it didn’t belong,” came another voice, so far away. What the fuck are you?” 

Hayko sucked in a breath, “L-lawyer...I swe’r I won't breathe a w-word–” He wailed loudly as a boot slammed down onto his stomach, knocking him breathless and a mess of his bloodied spit shot to the air. 

“Shut the fuck up. Lawyer, eh?” the man mused. “Looks like we got you all wrong then. You’ll defend me in court for this, _won’t_ you?” Most of the group dissolved into laughter and he winced at its torturing volume that the laughs rang at. 

“Please don't...don’t k- _kill_ me,” he pleaded quietly, moving his gaze from one dark face to another in search of any speck of humanity or mercy and finding none of either. He took a rattling breath, coughing up a small spray of blood. “I-I won’t say an’thing I swear…” 

“Should we take him back? Let’s see whether the group’s in the mood for some fun tonight,” the man said darkly, with a cold-blooded eagerness that made Hayko want to heave.

“Listen we had a job to do and we did it, so let’s end this and get out of here now before the cops come.” 

“Oh _piss off_ , the night’s still young. Can’t we have a little fun before it’s over?” 

The men’s voices swirled around him as Hayko looked from one to the other, eyes wide and desperate and hoping for the verdict to be in his favour, whichever one that was. Would it really be better to end it here? _I could convince them to let me go or–or–_

Suddenly, he yelped as a fistful of his hair tore upwards, the fingers digging into his scalp as he was held before the group like a ragdoll. “Fine, but if we get fucked up for this, you’re taking the blame.” 

“Oh Santi, you worry too much. Just get the car and I promise we’ll be fine.” 

Hayko thrashed desperately when he was dragged to a popped trunk, open like an empty grave, the gravel tearing at his legs with each meter he was mercilessly dragged. This was a favourable choice, wasn’t it? No, there was no fucking favourable choice because he was _dying either way._

“No-no, s-stop! Let _go!_ ” he cried, contorting against the grip.

His captor growled, “He’s being difficult.”

“Knock him out then, genius.” 

As ‘Santi’ mounted him with his sleeves rolled back, Hayko could finally get a good look at the face: a dark complexion, sunken eyes, and a mouth twisted with years of misanthropy. It looked possible that maybe he wasn’t a willing participant in all of this. But without hesitation, the fist drew back and knocked the wind out of him anyway, suffocating, punishing. The impact made his head snap to the side, the loose gravel sinking into his throbbing cheek and tears springing to his eyes but that was _nothing_ compared to the oncoming blows. 

Once. _Wham._

Twice. _Crack._

Three times. _Scream. His scream._

By the fourth, he couldn’t see and by the fifth, he couldn’t feel, couldn’t breathe. Nothing but the potently metallic taste coating his tongue and teeth, eyes too blurry to open, the man’s weight too tight on his chest to allow a breath, blooming purple patches left in the wake of each punch. He heard whistles and cheers whooping as the beating went on, strangely none from the man inflicting it. 

Eventually, he was catatonic enough for their liking, barely able to catch small glimpses of light as they dragged him across the pavement. Everything burned but he couldn’t feel anything, so _nothing burned_. The only sound that brought him back just a little was the trunk slamming shut over him, darkness overtaking. And then the engine’s ignition.


	6. Carved Mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hayko meets the rest of his life and the man to whom he now belongs.

“Just what did you think was going to happen?” The question bit through the otherwise silent warehouse. Snide. His mind was too foggy to process it. 

The attorney felt his wrists rubbed raw against the rope quicker than he felt the throbbing of his face when his eyes finally fluttered open. First, there was metal and then when he craned his neck way up, irregular bursts of artificial white light and God did it hurt to look at, but the uniform buzzing disorienting him further might have been worse. When he looked down from the ceiling, the pain suddenly wasn’t as important. 

Through the throbbing of his head, he counted _one three five seven_ and not a single one of them looked happy to be standing in the exhaust of cigarette fumes that swirled around the crates they leaned on. Hayko felt the dull wave hit him like a truck, a painful shifting in his chest and yep ribs are broken as he prodded his tongue around, gingerly feeling each copper-tasting tooth and praying everything was still there. 

A voice pierced the air again, impatient Hayko didn’t respond the first time, “You thought you would just run in and save him? His time was up, gringo, and yours is too, you listening? _Hey!_ ”  
Hayko was listening, or trying to at least, through that droning _bzzzzzzt_ of the lights. Suddenly, someone’s hand cracked across his face and he gasped sharply as reality materialized. “Fucking stupid gringo didn’t even ring the cops before he ran in all dressed-to-impress, trying to fight with a suitcase. Do you even know who we _are?_ ” Hayko wasn’t sure, but he felt like he shouldn’t answer. 

Between the loud one and the emptiness in the back of the warehouse, the remaining men were silent. They glowered with just as much menace as the man spoke with but did nothing, arms folded over their chests and watching him. A slow, shuddering inhale. “...What d’you want?” Hayko forced out, amazed his throat worked at all but unsure if his tongue did too since it felt like the first time using it. “I have money, jus’ check-” He was frustrated, unable to voice a coherent thought. “In, in m-my jacket.” 

“You think I would go through the trouble of bringing you here just to rob you?” Another pause. As Matias swung his arms front to back, he gleefully sang, “You’re not getting off _that_ easily.” 

He swallowed his nerves, trying not to give his fear away. “Then what?” The way the gangster’s smile gleamed in return made him uneasy and he pressed back into the chair involuntarily. “I, I swear I won’t breathe a word to anybody,” he pleaded, low. His tongue burned from just those few sentences.

“You _promise?_ ”

“... Y-Yes.”

“I’m hearing hesitation, lawyer. You’re not lying to me, are you? Because if you are lying to me,” he lowered to Hayko’s eye level, voice dropping to a raspy sweep, “Then you’ll miss being able to breathe without a _tube_.” 

His jaw trembled, inches away from him, but he kept his eyes up. If there was one thing he refused to do, it was faltering his gaze to pieces of shit, especially when they hadn’t earned it. “I promise, I won’t say an’thing,” he finished, stifling his stammers. His tongue felt numb, dead weight he was pushing around to spill meaningless negotiations. 

Nodding, Matias straightened up and glanced back to the others. “You hear that?” he laughed, “He promises he won’t say anything.” He turned back and gripped his face, shaking it slightly. “Well, that’s just too damn bad because you’re stuck here until... _he_ answers for you.” In what seemed like caution, he lowered his voice further. “And trust me when I say that you’ll wish you-” 

“Leave him alone, idiot,” hissed Santiago. “His head’s so busted in he can’t even hear you.” He uncrossed his arms and pushed off the box he lent on as the man shot him a steely glare, defensive.

“What’s it to you?” he taunted back. 

Santiago snorted in offense, “You think I’m defending him? No, I’m telling you to shut the fuck up and sit quietly before-” His head snapped to the warehouse door as it clicked and screeched open and instantly, silence blanketed everyone. The rush of cold air that swept in chilled the room and even when he kicked the door shut, did the room stay cold. The approaching footsteps echoed sharply from behind him, not fast enough for fear but impatient enough that Hayko’s eyes travelled to his shoulder warily. Whoever it was that struck complete silence, even in Matias who backed away from the chair, he wasn’t happy. 

“Do I look like an errand boy, gentlemen?” he spat from behind, not even glancing at Hayko. The ensuing laugh came from him like a sprung leak - low first, stopping and starting until it pierced his ears. “Because I’m under the impression that you think you can call me whenever you fucking feel like it. Is that it? Tell me right now, so I can _correct_ your thinking.” 

He was greeted with silent deference. Some of the men, who were once ironclad and terrifying, shifted timidly with bated breath, their hands clasped together at the waistband of their pants.   
“We’re sorry, sir,” spoke up Santiago, keeping himself together, “we felt like you could deal with this best since Don Juan-”

He cut him off with an offhand gesture. “When is this about _him_? This is about _me_ , Santi, and how you _vergas_ don’t respect a man’s sleep schedule,” he said with a perfectly pleasant grin. “Now, what have we got here?” He walked up to Hayko and pressed a hand to his shoulder, chuckling gleefully when he flinched away. “Aw, don’t be scared, pretty boy,” he crooned as he spun the metal chair around, the screech muting him for a second until they faced each other. 

Hayko’s breaths shook as he found the courage to look up, finding bottle-green eyes boring into him from a dark face. Not his skin, but dark from the look of him. Even now as his teeth flashed in a shark grin, giving him a once-over, the smile was dark. 

“Oh my, what did these brutes do to you? You’ve got bruises all over that _pretty_ Chevy Chase.” The man’s thumb prodded his lips roughly, delighting in the gasp of pain with each tender spot he abused. Though there was something in the way he slowed down and smoothly took a hold of his face that rattled Hayko to his core. “Where did you find such a cute one?” 

Santiago eyed Hayko suspiciously. “We were taking care of something and he must’ve heard the commotion since he came running straight to us.” 

“Straight into your arms,” he hummed, tilting Hayko’s head up, and up, and up until the fluorescents brightened him completely and then he caught his breath. “Straight into _my_ arms.” 

Hayko was paralyzed with disbelief that turned to horror as the junkie college student that had once made him miserable all those years ago now towered over him in all his glory. His face was unmistakable. “Y-You...” he faltered. Nick. 

“Me indeed.” 

“You _know_ him?” Matias was suddenly speechless, understanding that if that was the case, his interaction with Hayko a few minutes ago may be answered later. “Is he your lawyer, or something?” _God forbid_ he thought.

Nick’s eyebrows furrowed, “Lawyer? You were a cop back then, weren’t you?” Besides the faint scar cutting across his left eye, he looked almost entirely the same, if not more vicious. 

“I-I…” Hayko fumbled with words he wasn’t even sure he could find. This wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be. He had thrown himself into an unforgiving world that wouldn’t mercy selflessness, a void out of which he couldn’t be rescued, and the one who had flung him there was nothing short of eager to pull him further in. 

“No need to be scared, Haykuhi.” Like glass, it tore at him when Nick spat the nickname used so many times before to get a rise out of him, a reaction, rather than what it was meant to be - endearing. But it wasn’t fucking endearing, it was torture hearing the memory spat again and again. Hayko shook his head rapidly, trying to scrape back some fleeting hope that this was a nightmare, but it slipped away each time Nick sank his thumb into a bruised patch of skin. “ _Nicolas_ ,” he breathed and the name sounded so, so wrong. So _flattering_.

“Call me _Nick_.” He looked up at the men who watched the show in intrigue. “Why didn’t you kill him?” Asked like a threat and Hayko felt his heart sink. 

Santiago glared at Matias intently. “We thought he might be undercover or something and wanted to get permission in case...he was.” Although being as thoughtless as the lawyer had been, Santiago hoped the lie worked to save face. To save the explanation that really, he was alive to be eventually killed after they had made use of whatever fun he would give. 

“I’m glad you know your rules by heart, Santi,” he sneered and let Hayko’s face drop. “Really, I’m glad you know them so well because, in truth, I’m not done with this one yet.” Nick looked at him, a knowing smile blossoming. “Go home, all of you.” And Hayko felt his heart _stop_.

Any objections expected out of them never came, choked down or coughed out as departing footsteps filled the warehouse and doors creaked shut within minutes. And the second that last metal door screeched shut, he knew this was it. That whatever hope for mercy he still held would be dashed to pieces. 

“Now,” Nick backed up and bent, palms over his knees. “Have you been well?”

“...Fine.” 

“Lovely.” He stood upright and no sooner had he done that than his foot connected with Hayko’s chest, sending him clattering, crying in pain to the floor. Hayko fought for breath under the oppressive pressure of broken ribs, the awful glare of lights so hard that he only felt Nick again when he slammed his foot over his throat. He was all choked garbles and wide eyes, wrists wedged between him and the floor as Nick crouched closer. “Now you’re going to listen to me.” His breath fanned warmly over his face. “And you’re going to listen well, Hayko. Because right now, I’m the only one you need to be listening to.” He increased the pressure, watching his back arch desperately for air. “If there was anyone else here instead of me, you would be done and whatever’s left of your skull would be sprinkling this floor.” 

Throat burned. His vision started to blur again and he was about to give himself to the black splotches and unconsciousness, already _so fucking hurt_ , but Nick knew when to lift his foot and when he did, he knew how gratefully he would accept the gift. “Lucky for you,” he said, reaching down to the back of the chair and heaving it upright without the faintest difficulty, “I’m a generous man and I’ll negotiate with you. Would you like that?” 

Tears pricked at Hayko’s eyes as he drew in the air in shuddering gasps and then expelled it all with dry coughs. “Y-yes, I would.” And even though his authority had been totally ripped from him in the past few hours, he couldn’t help but feel he still had some lingering power. “What are, are,” he gasped out, “are your terms?”

Nick’s eyes glistened with triumph. “From now on, I’ll make use of your degree and you’ll work for me. I’m your priority client and so is anyone I tell you.” 

“... _No_.” 

“What did you just say?” he hissed, dangerously low. “Darling, did I mishear you?” 

Hayko glared up at him. “I’m not representing you, Nick.” His name came in a snarl. “Whatever you’re in for, you probably deserve it. What you don’t deserve is me acquitting you for a murder that I’m sure you’ll commit at one point.” 

Gradually, a dark chuckle rang out into the ever-tightening warehouse. “I think you misunderstood. I wasn’t asking, I was _telling_.” The distinctive flick of a switchblade made him tense. As the knife traced a line down his nose slowly, Hayko didn’t break his steely look from Nick who was all too ready to return it. “If you don’t want to die in the next few seconds, you’ll take this-.” 

“Then fucking kill me.” He snarled it with such daring virtue that Nick was taken aback. But Hayko didn’t want to die, not really. Not at _all_. But one thing he was sure of was that Nick wasn’t going to kill him just yet, and the fact that his throat was still free of the blade increased his confidence.

“Oh no, dear, I’m not offering either. I’ve always needed a trusty safety net in case one of my colleagues fucks me over and you’re a perfect fit. You are doing this.” Nick had begun to circle the chair, meandering behind him, switchblade still up but Hayko wasn’t resigning. 

“I’m not doing shit, go find yourself another l-lawyer, prick.” This involuntary waver was from the blade pressing to his throat and he gasped softly. “Please, don’t. I can’t, I just _can’t_. If they find out I’ll be disbarred, I-I’ll go to prison.” He loathed himself for begging like this, debasing himself into pleading for his honour, his career, his entire life especially when Nick couldn’t give less of a shit but he had to _try_. _I can’t I can’t I just can’t._

Nick didn’t answer for a second until the blade pulled away from his aching throat. Hayko shuddered in relief when the cool sensation left but as the fabric of his button-up started to tear, he pulled against the restraints. “What are you doing?” No answer. His shirt continued to rip open until cold warehouse air washed over his upper back. “Stop, what-”

“Since you’re so eager to die, let me help you get there yourself.” 

There wasn’t even teasing of the switchblade before it sunk into his shoulder and a ragged scream fought its way up to his throat. White pain. 

“Since you think I’m fucking negotiating with you-”

Hayko cried out desperately when Nick jerked his wrist up, drawing a long line of blood with it and then diagonally across and then up again. He screamed with his whole body, writhing against the invasion of his skin, eyes wide with horror and pain, mouth slack, knuckles blanching and fists clenched around the ropes so tightly that his fingernails broke the skin of his palms. 

“Since you think you’re still the one in power here,” Nick snarled into his exposed neck as he carved him out, “Let me remind you who it is now.”

It seemed to go on forever. Every second he was being carved into felt like minutes that he couldn't keep track of. His pleas weren't heard and he could feel not a single broken rib suffocating him. He couldn't feel his throat burn from being crushed. The broken crescents in his palms didn't sting. His swollen and battered face didn't throb as intensely, it didn't throb at all. Because through the torture, all he could feel was a pair of jagged initials being branded into him where they would forever be, reflected in the mirror every morning from now on. And soon on his upper shoulder, a mess of blood and carved marks spelled out who it was that was in power. 

_N. S._ Nick Sinclair. The man to whom he now belonged.


	7. Captivity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding himself miles from rescue in Nick's basement, Hayko makes a phone call.

Between the discomfort of how tightly he was restrained against the pole and the looming shadow of his captor above him, lucidity couldn’t be further from reach. This couldn’t be anything but a nightmare. For his sanity’s sake, it had to be. And the gears in his head were just now starting to turn, bringing the icy wash of dread that this was all real. 

“Hungry?” Nick held a small plate in one hand, balanced on top of which was a glass that reflected nothing and caught no stray light in the condensation beading on the outside.

But it was all real. Cold and aching, it was all real. 

“I don’t want your fucking food,” Hayko said, eyes alive with a defiant fire. Nick didn’t react which he saw as leeway to negotiate. “What I _want_ is for you to let me go.” Unconfident though he was, he felt an authoritative grip in his words that covered up his fear. “Is this how you treat all your legal partners?” 

“I treat them however I want,” Nick replied with a grin. 

It was hardly a surprise, but Hayko wasn’t anticipating more than, well, him. Just like he hadn’t anticipated more than one gangster at the scene behind the brick wall that had landed him here and maybe premature assumptions were his flaw. 

The man gestured loosely to the plate with his head. “Are you hungry? Or should I leave you here for another few hours to rethink that ungrateful tone?” There was a hint of eagerness to do that, Hayko could tell or scratch out from the glimmer in his eyes and that silvery vocal swing.

“Couldn’t give less of a _shit_.” Wary of the suddenly claustrophobic sensation from how close Nick stood to the pole, he pulled his legs to his chest but every word still snapped like live wires. Although, he could do without condiments in his hair but if that was the worst of it, the punishment was a welcome one. “Look, untie me and I-I’ll take care of whatever trouble you got yourself into.” 

A pause followed by a chuckle. “Giving orders, are we?” Nick licked his lips with a sly smile and jerked his wrist, brightening in satisfaction when he flinched away from the glass, his hands twitching in the ropes as they tried to shield his face from what never came. “You’ve got something of a spine, sweetheart.” 

Hayko cringed at the pet name. _Sweetheart_. “I don’t get what you gain by keeping me here.” He kept a firm look on him, feigning courage that wasn’t there. So long as the occasional shakes in his voice didn’t betray him, Nick couldn’t tell. He hoped.

But his eagerness only sharpened with each attempt to negotiate, a darker look wiping his amusement clean and turning it into something he didn’t register at first. Nick moved so close, crouching down, that Hayko could smell the balmy frankincense on his collar. “You wouldn’t know what I gain from keeping you here if I _explained_ it, darling” he said.

And suddenly, Hayko felt he knew what was on his face. _Hunger_. Quickly, he snapped his head away from the invasive one but that didn’t stop the warm, staccato breaths of laughter on his cheek. He forced down a swallow and closed his eyes. “What...do you want?”

“Trust me,” Nick replied, living for the fear dancing so close to his face and hoping he could pull it out. “Nothing you won’t give me.” He set the plate down and hands were suddenly in Hayko’s pockets, frisking him until they pulled out a phone before he could thrash around. “Like this for example.” 

“That’s-” The fear that travelled in his veins was just short of betraying him and his eyes darted from the phone to Nick’s pleased leer. “What do you _want_?” No more matt skin as he felt his forehead suddenly burn with sweat.

“What I want is for you to call your friend, any friend, I’m really not bothered, just pick,” he said, “And what you’re going to do is tell them that you’ll be...out of town for a few days.” Nick swung the phone gently as he spoke, seemingly closer than he was before. “And when I’m done with you, you have my _word_ that I’ll drop you off at the same corner you got picked up from.” 

Hayko watched the phone swing with a firm mouth, knowing that whether he did it or not wasn’t for him to decide, but that the moment the call would end was the opening to his early grave. It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t. He would break as soon as he heard anyone’s voice other than Nick’s, break into pleas for help and fast, desperate speech and before he knew it, the voice on the other end would click away. “No, I-I ca-.”

“And before you answer, keep in mind that we made a deal.” Nick took a hold of his wild mess of brown curls and yanked it back against the pole, exposing his neck with a readiness to tear it open. “If I hear a hint of fear or some sort of coded message or if you - God forbid - _panic_ ,” he cautioned as he smoothly traced a finger from his jugular down into the hollow of his collarbone, “I’ll make this pretty throat of yours not so pretty. So, do me a favour and cooperate because it is a _very_ pretty throat and I plan on seeing a lot more of it.”

Nick watched his breaths come and go in shallow puffs, teeth clenched in pain at the tender scalp being abused for the hundredth time that day or week or however long it had been, and whimpers being held back with all his strength. Of course his throat wasn’t what some would call conventionally pretty given the bruising and redness, but it would eventually heal, and that was the exciting part to him. 

“K-Kennedy,” Hayko forced out, grinding his teeth together when the merciless grip in his hair only tightened. “Her, her name is Kennedy in my contacts. Just-.” A pained whine jumped out of his throat just short of a scream, “Call her and I’ll - _a-ah_ \- I’ll talk.” The resignation was mostly to stop that awful throbbing in his skull but Nick didn’t seem to care why he had said it, only that he had. 

In less than a minute, the password-less phone was hooked up to his ear where the droning rings buzzed against his temple. Each buzz was one moment closer to whatever Nick had planned for the few days his existence would be forgotten by the world. Unsuspected. For all anyone knew he was out of town and not being held in some maniac’s nightmare house. For all anyone knew, he was safe and not aching and battered and cold and nothing made sense or felt real. 

But it was all real. Every last bit of it. 

Kennedy’s voice was preceded by a click and clouded by static. _How fucking far away are we from downtown?_

“Hey, what’s up?” 

The bright Chicago accent tugged at something in him and he choked back a scream, a sob for rescue that the familiar voice, safe voice would hear. He choked back everything but a friendly “Hey Kay, I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time?” Professional. Almost inconspicuous. Nick blinked in what looked like approval and silent astonishment that he could even talk after his neck had been crushed by his boot only hours before. 

“Nah, I’m just finishing some errands. What can I do for you?” 

“So listen, I’ll be out of town for a couple of days,” Hayko kept his eyes locked on the space behind Nick, knowing that if he found that stare of his that his voice would break and Kennedy would never see him again. “And I forgot to tell anyone since-” 

“Oh, right!” Kennedy’s voice interrupted on the other end, “I-...sorry, I hope that didn’t sound weirdly enthusiastic, I forgot that you left the firm for your own thing. How’s the plan so far? All that independence sounds pretty exciting.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut and sighed inwardly. _Why did I call you?_ “Listen, I’m sorry, I’m on the road so I can’t talk for too long but...I just wanted you to know that I’ll be out of town with bad reception and so, if anyone’s looking for me,” Anyone at all, please, God, “I’ll be out of business for a few.” Hayko carefully slowed down his last few words, hoping that however much he stretched the run-on sentence gave Nick time to change his mind and Kennedy, a moment to catch his hesitation and do something and understand. 

But he didn’t and neither did she from what he heard. He only flashed a row of glimmering teeth at the promising “Sounds good, um, is that it?” and ended the call after his victim hopelessly confirmed it and the two had exchanged their goodbyes, one more hesitant to get out than the other. 

“You certainly took your time,” he crooned with a smirk, knuckles tracing down Hayko’s face to his visible disgust. “But you’re quite good at this, sweetheart.” And the phone was tucked into Nick’s own pocket where Hayko assumed it wouldn’t be for much longer or intact at that. “You didn’t think she could read your mind, did you?”

Blanched knuckles from clenching his fists too hard and gritted teeth, animosity radiated off in waves, white rage bubbling up inside him at that _obscene_ smile, Nick _knowing_ he got what he wanted. Before Hayko knew what was happening, shaking breaths turned rapid and he took the opportunity of their closeness to slam his forehead against his captor’s face, nose flaring in triumph when the man cried out and stumbled back. 

“ _Fuck you_ ,” he spat through the dizziness. “Fuck. _You_. You can do whatever you want to me, just know that if you end up killing me, it won’t be easy to find another ally. You’ll-you’ll have to waste more time blackmailing or coercing some other-” he scrambled for words as his captor recovered, “-another _counsel_ with everything to lose and then you’ll think back to the day you killed me and fucking wish you hadn’t.” His chest was heaving at the end of the tangent as he glared at Nick, waiting desperately for a reaction. 

A pause. “Jesus, love, that _hurt_ ,” Nick said in surprise more than anger, wiping away a streak of blood from his nose. “You’ve got quite the temper, haven’t you?” The blood ran down his thumb as he approached with an agonizing slowness, not even acknowledging the distressed attempt to change his mind. “I like the feisty ones, given they’re not too violent, but I think...I’ll forgive you for this one.” 

Hayko swallowed his response.

“Because I haven’t gotten a chance to change that yet. Now how fair would that be to you?” At a casual pace, he passed his captive on the ground, who flinched as his hand swung by. He grabbed a cardboard box - heavy from the look of it - and walked to the staircase, footsteps going up one at a time and nearly noiseless until the door slamming shut choked them off. 

Left under the weight of complete and utter solitude, that same dread crept over Hayko and it hadn’t been five minutes since Nick had left but he was already almost wishing he hadn’t. 

Cold and aching, it was all real. 

So he leaned his head against the pole - eyes squeezed shut, food untouched - and tried his hardest to pretend it wasn’t.


	8. Slammed into a Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dilated pupils. watch out for that.  
>  Bloodshot eyes. Restlessness.  
> Don't provoke him like this._

Solitude wasn’t an issue for long once darkness pressed into the room, its velvet quality blanketing everything so quickly that it was impossible to stay awake, after which the throbbing migraine was getting too much for him to handle. He was blinded with flashing patterns of agony crushing his skull from every corner until he could scream but he held himself back. He bit his tongue. Hayko had a feeling he had to hide his pain - no, any reaction - from _him_ because even a flinch or microexpression was enough to do something to the way Nick looked at him, to the feeling between them. It made him feel sick. 

Nick liked his pain. 

Short ribbons of memory could be pulled back from the few seconds his eyes had fluttered open between fits of unconsciousness. Every time he woke up, the restraints were still there - he hadn’t even _loosened_ his arms - but he did his best to ignore the creeping numbness. That wasn’t difficult. Sleep hit him like a truck every time, the next interval longer than the last. 

Hayko couldn’t remember most of the next day, his body too wracked with exhaustion to bother trying to get loose. It wasn’t like it would work anyway. Every shred of spirit had been drained so completely in the past few days that he had barely enough to register the occasional footsteps dribbling down the stairs, the crates and boxes dragged up, even streams of fleeting light that hit the wall when the door swung open and shut. Suddenly, a voice.

“¿Y...qué te hizo?” 

“No te metas.” 

His Spanish was a bit rusty but Hayko managed to catch words and phrases well enough, buried in sleep only to his ears. _And what did he do to you?_ And then a cautioning _Don’t interfere._

“Tengo curiosidad.” 

“Haces tu trabajo, Matias.” 

He found it strange that it was never Nick who cautioned the workers even though they worked for him. As if he didn’t have to. The sensation of moving through molasses was finally fading, eyes leaden with sleep fluttering slowly until his hand’s silhouette materialized. 

“Hey, gringo, wake up.” An internal groan.

A worker scoffed. “Matias, do you ever do your fucking job?” 

“Hold on, hold on, I think sleeping beauty’s finally awake.” Matias’ voice came first as an echo, and then sharp enough to jolt him awake. Hayko was on his side when he was prodded in the stomach with his shoe and when he snapped his head back, expecting to feel smooth rounded metal and ropes, he moved freely. 

Weakly, Hayko turned his head up, eyes glazed over and squinting away from what little light outlined the crates and oh, _God_ that fucking headache was still there. Matias leered down at him with a self-congratulatory grin like he played some part in him being here, like the cuts and bruises were expected. 

Expected? No, deserved.

“Hey there, kid,” Matias crooned. Pushing back Hayko’s head and laughing at the wince it earned, he dipped to his level. “Having fun down here? Man, I wish I could join you but y’know I’m a little busy.” Two fingers dug into his forehead, another grunt stopping behind his teeth.

He started to snarl a response until another pair of cleaner shoes made their way over. Not hesitating to scramble away, Hayko pressed himself against a crate tightly, hoping it swallowed him but the material betrayed him.. Like a wild animal pushed into some wilder predator’s den. 

But the predator was wearing six brass rings that could dent bone if he really wanted them to. 

“Here you’ve gone and distracted me again, Haykuhi. And to think I could do my job down here once without you moving around like that. God, do you _know_ what that does to me?” And greed dripped from every word, his captor clearly revelling in the disgust that twitched over his mouth. Nick dangled his arms as he meandered closer, a twinkle in his half-smile.

Really, the only thing Hayko could look at were those rings and how badly they could leave marks on him. His eyes unconsciously flickered up from each brass circle to the predator’s face, legs trying to find strength to run and a direction to run in but it was too late by then. Nick hunched over the crate, two arms on either side of his head but Hayko wasn’t moving his eyes from the ground, and not out of fear but defiance. 

“Look up.” 

His head moved up a couple inches at a time but he finally found the eyes boring down into him just as - if not more - piercing than usual. Now that he looked at him carefully, they looked...redder or bloodshot. Pupils dilated. Memory was a bizarre thing but he was getting the faintest déjà vu. 

Nick snapped twice. “Hey, love, do you know how long you’ve been out?” His voice had a slow cadence and a scrape of hoarseness. “You spend a few hours in my house and think you live here now? I’m not a fucking hotel. From now on, you’ll be relieved if I let you go for even a _fraction_ of that long.” He moved closer to his face with each dark intonation.

Hayko turned his head away as best as he could but he didn’t have much space with the man’s arms trapping him against the crate. “I-” _Couldn’t stay awake_ is what he wanted to say. _I couldn’t stay awake, fuckface. Nobody can._ “I couldn’t stay aw-” 

“Couldn’t stay awake, sure, that’s a piss-poor excuse. I even made sure you weren’t too comfortable. I guess I’ll have to do more then, won’t I?” Hayko gasped as his face was whipped around, a rough hand curling around his jaw. “And have I mentioned how cute you look all bruised up like this?” he hummed, a crack of laughter leaving Matias in the background.

“He sure looks better,” he agreed. “Before, he didn’t know his place but now I’m sure he won’t make that mistake again.” Matias’s hand gripped his curls. “Hey.” A slick look flashed across his face, preparing for a blow. “I bet that shoulder still hurts, eh?” 

Hayko started with a quiet gasp. 

It stung. It didn’t take long for that initial surge of shock to change to helplessness again, and caustic tears bit at his eyes, his cheeks. Nick’s jagged lines burned with swelling and had almost kept him awake as his mind kept rushing back to how the pain had spiderwebbed over his entire body, how he had been claimed. _Claimed_ like a fucking object. How this vermin decided his body to be for carving. “Fuck off.” His voice was close to breaking. 

“What’d’you say?” Matias gave his head a shake with surprise. 

Unhinged laughter dribbled out of him. “I said fuck off. You’re a useless narco slave working for a sadistic drug addict-” Hayko shot a murderous look at Nick, “-that couldn’t stay out of prison long enough to get a job so he decided to bring the rest of them down to his-” He cried out when a hand collided with his face, eyes wide as the sting tapered off. That wasn’t nearly enough to stop him. “You’re a useless-” 

_Crack!_

“Pi-ece of-” 

_Crack!_

“Nar-co trash!-” he raggedly screamed out before the next red welt flashed on his face, the slap being louder than a clap and knocking his head to the side. In the wake of each brass ring hacking at his face were scattered cuts, drops of blood surfacing after each white flash and rolling down his cheeks. “Rot in fucking hell!” 

Nick breathed unevenly, deranged eyes wide with his palm open in case he wanted to continue trying his luck. “You’re not the _sharpest_ of them all, are you?” 

With warmth pooling his mouth and the twinge of copper in it too, he turned and spat a glob of blood at his cheek, a returned favour if one could call it that. Seeing it hit the target victoriously was a surge of strength. Nick gently touched a finger to his face, swiping at the liquid and everything was still for a moment. Hayko froze as he realized the unfamiliar darkness etched in his face.

A soft chuckle. “You little _shit._ ” 

This wasn’t hunger like last time, instead fury. 

“Wai-” His protest barely started before fingers clamped into hair and another hand flew to his shoulder, twisting into the shredded remains of the shirt. The bloodshot eyes were the missed clue. Even years before, they were the clue. 

Hayko cried out when he crashed into a crate and toppled over it, winded and clawing for safety as Nick approached him in long strides. A sharp breath, “Wait, wait, no-” He couldn’t live through another one. “Fuck, wait-” A foot connected with his ribcage, the breath knocked out of him so violently that he dropped his forehead to the ground, mind already clamouring for relief to come.

“You think you can run your mouth whenever you want just because I can be a little nice to you, hmm?” The next one sank into his stomach. “So let me show you how fucking _wrong_ you are.” Nick heaved him up from the floor, hurling him furiously at the wall and bringing a fist to the jaw before he could put his arms up. 

His body jolted with a fresh shock, crashing to the floor in a heap of limbs as blood sprinkled the concrete slabs. He groaned. “Get’th’fuck awa-” Words choked with another kick from above before Nick had heaved him up again. Hayko could barely keep track of each push and pull, whether he was on the floor or barrelling to the ground again. 

“What. will. it. _take_ -” He thundered between each slam against the wall, ignoring his knuckles bruising, “for you to learn your fucking. _place_?!” After the sixth merciless slam, he held Hayko against the wall to keep him from slumping to the ground. “What will it take to break you, huh?!” 

“H-Hey, man, I think we should get going,” Matias said, setting a cautious hand on Nick’s shoulder before the man whipped around to glare back, bloodlust spilled in his eyes. “The-...driver… He’s outside waiting for us.”

His chest shook with a thirst for violence and even with Hayko now, red teeth and fumbling at his grip weakly, he wanted to make a dent where his head was, a cue in the wall. A reminder. A warning. The way he pleaded at him with his eyes so full of genuine terror sent a vigor through him sharp enough that he would see him shattered and clinging to life before he stopped for a breath. But something stopped him and it wasn’t Matias’s familiar tone. 

The man’s wary voice came again. “We really should go.”

A broken groan fell from Hayko, whose eyes were too blurry to see where to grab, and he landed on Nick’s wrist shakily. “Nngh, st-...stop…” he slurred, “stop... _psycho_.” Blood nearly broke from how hard he bit his tongue at the slip. But the man didn’t retaliate. 

A pause. “Let this be a warning to you, love,” Nick breathed as his fury slowly resigned. “I’m not a patient man.” He pulled back, letting his victim wobble and collapse at last, and found Matias’s eyes with a listless turn. No words were exchanged besides the latter’s halfhearted nod before he grabbed the final package and disappeared up the staircase. Nick looked back once and cast an eye over the battered man whose coughs mixed with rapid gulps for air wouldn’t have let him notice it anyway but even if he did, the stillness between them discouraged words. 

Hayko had learned one thing about the man and that included the fact that he had never cleaned up his drug use. Although he didn’t expect him to have, this was beyond anything he had imagined. He pushed himself on his back, eyes fixing on the ceiling so he could find a shred of focus, maybe to find a crack to look at. Maybe something interesting to keep him awake this time. 

_Dilated pupils, watch out for that._

He thought about whether Kennedy had suspected anything over the phone. He thought about his job and how many clients were greeted with a voicemail and assumed they had been abandoned. He wondered if he would ever see them again. 

_Bloodshot eyes. Restlessness._

It hurt. It hurt so, so much. But it also felt so, so good just to take back the power for the briefest second even if he paid for it. There was no telling how much longer he would be held here and whether he would even live to feel another gale off Lake Michigan, catch another whiff of food trucks scattered on his daily commute. If he would even see his _family_ again. 

_Don’t provoke him like this._

Provocation hadn’t gotten him anything but regret in the past few days. Every insult coated with wrath may have made him feel good for a second, a little pang of victory at how their faces twisted and their egos throbbed. It felt so good. 

But after this, he just wanted to stop hurting. Even for a second he just wanted to feel safe and warm, neither unconscious nor greeted with whatever captivity had to offer. And he was willing to give up each and every insult for a while if it meant he could.


	9. A Common Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was no longer _I_ but _we_.

Not once did he think the creak of a door would make him fear for his life. But that morning, recovering from yesterday’s mistake, it did. As footsteps came down through the dark for the fourth day in a row, he flinched back like clockwork, ready to keep his mouth snapped shut if it meant he would leave him alone. The lesson was learned and the evidence was more than skin-deep.

“Hello?...”

He didn’t always have to bite and scratch his luck in a greedy scramble for more than he was allowed to have. Not that it wasn’t worth the effort, just that the fallout had been more than he was able to handle and it wasn’t certain for how much longer he could handle it.

“Are you there?” The voice was startlingly unfamiliar and Hayko snapped his eyes up to where the darkness rounded the man’s figure. _No, I’m not here._ Or at least he tried not to be anymore. But that cadence of the question was different than usual: not so confident.

Vladimir stood a few steps from the ground when he reached them, one hand folded over a thin plate and the other anxiously pressed against the railing, nails close to leaving crescents in the wood, and it felt like the man was waiting patiently to be noticed. 

Propping himself on his elbows, Hayko met the eyes invisible behind the square glasses. “ _Yeah._ ” The answer barely passed as one but he seemed satisfied and inched down the last few stairs, shoulders awkwardly hunched. The two held the look for a moment as if testing the waters and looking for a threat that wouldn’t be found.

“I brought you something...to eat.” Vladimir motioned the plate up for a sliver of a second, but the shadow behind it shifted enough for the man to catch the movement. Hayko watched and strangely, the man wasn’t the first thing he thought of when the plate came into view but whether that was the same rejected one from what felt like weeks ago. 

He had intended on keeping quiet but there was something safe about the shadow he couldn’t place that brought up words so violently beaten down. “Thanks,” he croaked out after a still second and then pushed himself against a box, slumping against it for support. 

A nod and Vladimir approached steadily out of fear of scaring the man who looked like he had already met the others a few times in poor circumstances. On the way, there were items scattered that he took care to step over instead of kick aside and softly set the plate far enough away that a push and scrape of ceramic was all it took to send it in front of him. 

Hayko flinched at the noise so subtly it could have been missed in broad daylight but the man’s thin eyebrows didn’t, furrowing noticeably at the reaction. He swallowed, eyes darting from the door a level above and back to him about to say something but Hayko’s rasp interrupted.

“...Why?” Deep-set brown eyes peaked up at his own beneath eyebrows, mistrust lining the stare. “Who-...Who told you to?” 

Vladimir was frozen for a moment but the right twitch in the face betrayed the answer both of them knew anyway. He cleared his throat. “Ah... _he_ did.” And then a quick glance to the door again because this was _his_ house, after all, and that man had a way of gliding noiselessly that nobody ever knew he was behind them until he wanted them to.

Hayko gave him a once-over before he reached for the plate with a shaking hand, pulling it towards him by the dip in ceramic. It didn’t matter what was on the plate considering he wouldn’t be eating it, even if there was that hollow ache in his stomach that hadn’t gone away for two days. He just wasn’t confident that food would cure the pain. 

“Who are you?”

Vladimir blinked at him with an uncertainty that quickly turned to pity. “Volodya.” 

“So...Russian?”

“Yes, ah, I-...Yekaterinburg,” he added, unsure if the detail was important or whether the man found him at all familiar with the city. “I think the accent might indicate that.” There was a low, hoarse laugh at the end that he choked back when the man’s face didn’t move.

“Hm.” A spared sound of acknowledgment before swallowing dryly. “My...um, my name’s Hayko.” Maybe that was the reason he had asked in the first place, for an opportunity to give his own, to have it known and said by someone safe. _To have it known._ That was it because if there was one thing he wouldn’t allow to be forgotten, it was that. They could beat his dignity out of the material world and keep him locked up here until his grave but they wouldn’t take his fucking name. 

That was his and his alone and it deserved to be remembered.

“I have actually heard that name before but I, I cannot really remember where,” Vlad said with his best at a comforting smile.

He scoffed quietly, straightening up against the box. “Well, I can’t say...that-... I expected a Russian in a cartel but… _mne vso ravno._ ” 

There was a pause as if the uncertainty between them had been broken and replaced by a common line. One only between them.

“ _Vy govorite po-russki?_ ” Vladimir’s eyes seemed to brighten and he lowered his lanky figure to the floor, slumping over his knees in as comfortable a position as he could. Hayko had a hint of an accent and didn’t look much like a Slav but the hoarseness in his voice nearly disguised the imperfection. 

“ _Da, no ne mnogo,_ ” he returned, closing his eyes for a second. He hadn’t spoken for nearly a month since the last phone call with his mother but apparently that wasn’t enough to forget basic pronunciation. He could have laughed at the paranoia if his chest didn’t hurt when he did. 

“It is a surprise but h-...” Vladimir’s voice quickly fell into a hush, suddenly cautious around the question sitting at the tip of his tongue. “Hayko, how did you... _get here?_ ” 

Vlad wanted to point to what he had meant to ask about, and about what he could have possibly done to earn a beating that bad but it wasn’t like much had to be done to earn one with them. And from the look of it, he couldn’t be involved. Not yet, anyway. They treated their own better than this as long as mouths stayed shut. 

Hayko swallowed the lump forming in his throat as he broke eye contact, looking emptily at the plate. _I know what I did but I still don’t deserve this._ He would desperately claw for strength to tell the man what had been endured the past few days if not for his fear of breaking mid-sentence. And he couldn’t risk that with the only one who hadn’t seen him as the others had. Not yet anyway.

“I don-” he rasped, “I don’t...remember.” 

It wasn’t entirely a lie. Nobody had told him how he had been dragged from the warehouse to Nick’s hellhole basement God-knows-how-many miles away but he didn’t need to know the details. Was it important that he knew? What purpose did it serve besides further horrifying him at what one fucking psychopath was capable of? 

“You do not have to.” Vlad’s voice came low and understanding after giving the man a second to recover. 

“I want-...I need to get out of here. I can’t stay here, Volodya-”

He inhaled sharply. “I know.” 

“Christ, fuck he’s-...he’s out of his mind, I can’t stay here, I can’t, I need to- to get out or he’ll fucking kill me, Vladimir, _he’ll kill_ -“

“Hey, sh-sh, hey, it is okay, please. Please, breathe.” Vlad scooted closer gently with a paternal air, hands nervously far from touching him as if there was something between them. “Listen, I- _blin_.”

There was stillness when he breathed until his chest shook with the crack of a ragged sob, so broken and muffled by his hand that nobody else in the world could have possibly heard it if they held their ears against him. A man with Hayko’s eyes wasn’t meant to cry like this because there was something moving, glowing under the surface of what definitely looked like penny-brown if there was more light. 

“ _Ty vyberesh'sya otsyuda._ ” Those words had no certainty but they dangled in the air after Vlad said them and Hayko held his gaze on the ground, justified if he didn’t believe them.

“ _Kak ya mogu tebe doveryat'?_ ” 

A crushing silence.

“You-...you cannot.”

Now he looked up with desperate eyes.

“I work for them and you...can not trust me but,” Vlad again looked at the door which was as close as it ever had been, “I _want_ you to.”

Hayko’s mouth moved an inch to say something but closed, eyes still locked on his. There was mistrust swimming beneath them. Fear. But there was something different about the shaggy blond and the years in his face, his experienced awkwardness. Strangers, though they were, Volodya didn’t look like he would hurt him for the fun of it. Taking his wrist, he roughly kneaded his eyes, close to scratching away the tears that gave the bruises subtle shapes in the dark.

“Why’re...you helping me?” His voice came gravelly and lined with disbelief that anyone would. 

Vlad sighed softly, giving one last look back to the door. The creeping dread winding through him couldn’t have been a good sign. “Because I-... Like you said, Hayko.” He swallowed. “We need to get out of here.” 

“What’s taking you so long, Russki?” Nick leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed and smiling slyly. 

His breathing hitched as Vlad turned around to meet him looming at the top of the staircase like a fucking prison guard, the key difference being that you could pay a prison guard enough to fuck off for some breathing room. 

“Sorry, I wanted to ask him some things.”

“What things?” 

A scoff. “Kolya-...Do not expect me not to be curious when you send me to your prisoner and he looks like _that_ ,” Vlad returned, gruff. “I am only a man.”

“And I’m only impatient so, if you’ve given him the food then you’re free to come upstairs.” Though from Nick’s tone, that was closer to _come up here right-the-fuck now._

The Russian didn’t need to be told twice but he glanced at the captive, hoping he caught the attention for even a second before he was on his way back. Luckily, Hayko had caught it and for how long the look lasted, he felt a flutter of hope move in him. _We need to get out of here._

_It was no longer _I_ but we._


	10. What is freedom?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freedom is sometimes conditional. Sometimes, it's nothing more than a costume.

He had the stool ready, waiting under the staircase.

Waiting for those footsteps and the shadows they dragged with them, the wall braced him as he waited and waited, inhaling dust from the skirtboards in staccato breaths that were too loud. He would hear. He would _know_. 

Sweat was starting to build between his palms and the metal but he couldn’t bring himself to loosen the grip. To make matters worse, a sneeze was coming on, his eyes were watering from the hollow dust and-

A mute gasp shot out as the stool clattered to the ground. His hands shot to shield his face as the blow of metal rang out into the room, pressing against his entire body as if it had been the impact of an explosion. _Fuck_. Terror locked his limbs until the walls had absorbed every echo and it was quiet again but even then he knew it wouldn’t be long before the lock flipped. He just knew.

 _Click_. And that would be the last one he would ever have to hear again.

Fear crawled back up his throat when he reached down and grabbed it again, trembling so violently that his breathing felt louder than the footsteps coming down the stairs. The darkness, now his ally, hid him well. Before he knew it, Nick had moved to the bottom of the stairs, scanning the room for him and Hayko wanted to laugh because for once, he wouldn’t get what he wanted. His captor made a noise of distaste until he seemed to stop, making sense of what was playing out. _Now_.

Nick turned around according to script and before Hayko lunged, he caught a glimpse of _fear_ in his eye just before the stool came down with such a clean weight onto his skull that the impact shook the air.

It was there and over so fast that he had fallen with the same fear he stood with and when there was no more movement, a choked sob fell into the pitch-black room, looking brighter by each second now. 

He was free. He was fucking free and the basement, his tattered clothes, the fresh blood soiling his hands and the metal stool were all gone, vanished. But where had they gone to?   
Hayko wished with his whole being that it didn’t matter but uneasiness began wrapping around him at the question because it suffocated his newfound freedom. There was no peace until he knew how everything was back to normal. It couldn’t be-

“Rise and shine, love. You are up, aren’t you?”

No. No, it had to be-

But t was too late to salvage it. The dream was gone.

Hayko blinked the tears and sleep out of his eyes and let the headrest of the car cushion the pain that always came back in pulses when he woke up. What he was expecting to feel - cold, hardwood flooring, crates, ropes - were all gone and an unfamiliar softness was in its place. It was then that he realized he was in a car. Interestingly enough, not in the trunk.

He took a second to breathe in the ventilated air, feel it scrape down his throat and dig his fingers into the cushioned seat just to feel it. Just to make sure it was real. 

“Where are we going?” he whispered with a voice hoarse from dehydration after the initial shock had worn off. “...I-I just want to know.” 

They were cruising down the interstate in what looked like the west if it wasn’t so dark to make out the buildings. Nick drove with one hand draped over the steering wheel, _disappointingly_ alive as he answered “Where I picked you up from” without even a look.

If he hadn’t been handcuffed, Hayko would have made sure they were both swerving into a tree just about then but the relief of being out of that shithole was almost too much to process. He didn’t know whether to prod the psychopath for answers or thank him. 

No, that was no good. _Don’t fucking thank him for the bare minimum. He kidnapped you and beat you and carved his fucking name_ -

He took a shivering breath, quiet enough that the ventilation overpowered it and one that Nick hopefully didn’t hear as he watched the road. It zipped by smoothly, markings on the road curving here and there in a way that was calming. God, how he had missed it. He didn’t know just how much he would miss the dance of road markings from a moving car until he saw them again. They were so simple, so inoffensive and a little faded but he had missed it still. 

“What’s that you’re watching?” Nick asked, irritatingly curious. 

“Road.” 

“Again?”

“The _road_ ,” he repeated, careful with the tone. 

“What’s so interesting about it, love?” 

Nick glanced over with an eyebrow pricked curiously that Hayko missed but felt even as his eyes were turned to the pavement. The vibrations made him a bit nauseous but he didn’t want to look away because the alternative was worse. He didn’t know how to respond and felt no obligation to play his game now. If only he could know the way his skull had split in half when the stool had come down. 

As the road zipped by, he felt his eyelids getting heavier with each bump and wanted to keep himself awake for if he was dropped off but there was always something _else_ that could happen. He preferred to be asleep if that was the case.

“That’s it. Just close your eyes, Hayko. And...remember who you belong to now.” That voice lulled him too gently to ignore and the world was black again.

Voices. Real _human_ voices.

“ _Holy shit. Jesus Christ is he-?..._ ”

“ _I-I think he’s still breathing_.”

“ _We need to call someone, oh my god_.” 

Why were they so distraught? He couldn’t look that bad. Though from unconsciousness, it was hard to tell just how bad the damage was. There had been head trauma, - too much of it - and he just fucking hoped it hadn’t caused any permanent damage. 

After that, it was glimpses of a building, tall and public looking. Muddled pressure of hands all over, pulling, carrying, dragging. Flashes of fluorescents behind eyelids that pierced too much and they just went on and on for what seemed like a hallway.

Sounds of metallic tools and small punctures that weren’t in him, whirring around the room mixed with sharp orders and sounds of other patients, so far away that they brushed his ear. Hayko hadn’t been in a hospital for some time now, not since the last time he had swerved into a tree in high school but it hadn’t been as bad then and he hadn’t had to consider the consequences of telling the truth. 

Eventually, his lungs expanded to undertones of bleach, eyes fluttering open to white tiled ceiling and voices mixed and low outside the room. The heart monitor’s rhythmic beeps brought him to quicker until he heard it speed up and propped himself back on his elbows to see plastic signs, a couple of trolleys, and- bandages. A _lot_ of them too. 

“I think he’s awake.” A hushed, frantic voice came from close to him where he hadn’t noticed a nurse standing and she looked shocked that he was even breathing. 

He didn’t want to startle her anymore so he croaked out a small “Hey” before laying back against the pillow. He could have melted into the softness too. It wasn’t every day that he went around cherishing how a bed felt but nobody could know just how good one felt after four fucking days of sleeping on the ground. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked softly, twisting the cap off a small medicine bottle with thin fingers. “I really hate to bug you more right now… You look like you could use the alone time but there are a few questions I need to ask and ones that the police have as well.” 

“P-... _police_?” His eyebrows furrowed at her, ignoring the first question and watching her give an apologetic nod as she dropped a few tablets into her palm. 

“Yeah, I’m sorry that they’re going to heckle you a little bit but we were really concerned because of how you were...erm...dropped off here.” She handed him the tablets softly, motioning to the glass of water on the nightstand when he took them. “It looks like whoever did this to you took off a few blocks from the hospital after they dropped you there.” 

He didn’t like how she swallowed nervously as she explained the ordeal. It made him feel seen-through and he never had liked making people worried, even for his sake. What could the cops want to ask him? There was nothing to ask since they couldn’t know about it, right?

The nurse’s questions of medical history and what he could remember went one after another with cautious pauses in case he couldn’t keep up but his stiff answers seemed satisfactory enough. It was when she finished the list and left that he prepared himself to face whatever the second barrage of _can you give us a name?_ and _can you recall the events of the past few days?_ was lined up for him.

The first woman through the door though made him do a double-take and it was when he felt something familiar about how she carried herself that he pushed himself further up until he was sitting against the pillow for a better look. 

“Afternoon sir.” Blanca’s voice was firm, a little jaded but it was clear she felt something looking at the state of him or at least something moved behind her dark eyes. “I hope this isn’t a hassle but there are a few questions we need to ask you.” 

He took a deep breath as he nodded, keeping a look fixed on her and trying to figure out where he had last heard that smooth Cuban lilt from. “Yeah, um...sounds good. Sorry, ma’am, What’s your name? If you don’t mind.”

She looked a bit surprised but cleared her throat and answered “Just call me ASAC Iglesias” like it was automated at that point.

He gaped a bit, startled enough to sit quietly for a moment, putting together Iglesias and the man she was probably looking for now. _Really, what are the odds_? There were some instances that couldn’t just be a coincidence.

“Hey, do I know you from somewhere?” She crossed her arms over her chest, giving him a second look with narrow eyes as if he was hiding something but it was quickly replaced with a softer and less threatening smile. “I remember touring some kid volunteering a couple of years ago and I could have sworn he looked just like-”

“Like me. The volunteer parole officer, right?”

“Right. Say, that guy you were in charge of was a pain in the ass, wasn’t he? Hopefully, he didn’t give you too much grief because my memory’s running short here.” 

He could have laughed hysterically or even a grim _you have no idea_ but the creeping cold dread that washed over him as he was about to speak made him think twice. He didn’t have the luxury of joking freely about that time in his life or him anymore because the game of who could know had changed. As she was taking a seat with her set of questions lined up, Hayko’s heart began to race in preparation to make up a truth that would be comfortable. 

“I’ve just got a few things to ask since we’ve been seeing increased gang activity in the city over the past few weeks and we suspect this might have to do with-” 

He wasn’t listening but when asked if ready, swallowed hard and nodded, reaching to the glass of water with a barely disguisable shake in his hand.


End file.
